Abstract
Development of new techniques for generating subpicosecond light pulses has led in the last few years to a number of exciting applications for measurement of extremely fast elapsing processes with high time resolution. In this contribution we report on an experiment with ultrashort light pulses by which coherent transients resulting from atomic level splittings with frequencies up to the terahertz range can directly be observed in the time domain. For the first time quantum beats, which are due to the fins structure splitting of the first excited electronic state in Na, have been measured. With a beat period of 1.9 ps or equivalently a frequency of 517 GHz this is the fastest quantum-beat signal observed so far.
© 1986 Optical Society of America
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