Abstract

In a forwardscattering experiment a linearly polarized laser beam traverses a resonant absorber that is in a tunable longitudinal magnetic field. After the absorber an analysing polarizer is oriented with its transmission axis orthogonal to the beam polarization. The intensity of the forwardscattered light through the analyser is detected. The light intensity depends both on the magnetic field strength and the laser frequency detuning from the Doppler broadened atomic line center.^1,2 In Fig. 1 these dependencies of the forwardscattered light intensity are shown for the case when a linearly polarised dye laser beam (power 10 mW) propagates through a neon absorber. The data points are taken with the magnetic field strength B fixed to three different values: B = 8.4 mT, B = 16.8 mT, and B = 25.2 mT. The horizontal scale derives from beat frequency measurements of the dye laser against a ¹²⁷I₂-He-Ne laser locked on the ¹²⁷I₂ g-line.

© 1994 IEEE