INTENSITY-DEPENDENT SPECTRAL REFLECTIVITY OF A DENSE-GAS DIELECTRIC INTERFACE

Intense light incident on a dense-gas dielectric interface, from the dielectric side, is reflected because of the combined effect of the discontinuities in the index of refraction at the interface and at the transition region in the gas where the degree of atomic saturation changes abruptly. This latter discontinuity gives rise to a self-reflected wave. At low intensities this self-reflected wave is weak, the problem is linear, and the net reflected wave intensity taken as a function of frequency has a simple shape that should allow measurement of the hitherto undetected self-induced frequency shift in a collision-broadened gas at an absorption resonance. Calculations show that in the weak intensity regime, r, the imaginary part of the reflection coefficient, is quasi-Lorentzian and shifted by an amount comparable to its width. At high light intensity r broadens, shifts, and distorts. The distortion, which nonuniformly modulates the Lorentzian shape, comes from an interference of the forward and self-reflected waves. In the wings of the resonance line the self-reflected wave can be neglected, and the shape of r although not distorted is shifted from where it would be if there were no local field correction. © 1990 The American Physical Society.