MJ MIXING AND MULTIPOLE RELAXATION IN 62P RUBIDIUM ATOMS INDUCED BY HE, NE, AND AR COLLISIONS

Rubidium vapor, contained together with a buffer gas in a quartz cell located in a 4.75-T magnetic field, was irradiated with light from a pulsed dye laser producing selective excitation of each 6(2)P Zeeman substate in turn. Collisions of the excited and polarized atoms with the ground-state He, Ne, or Ar atoms and the resulting Zeeman mixing produced a population of the whole Zeeman manifold and resulted in the emission of a Zeeman fluorescence spectrum that was resolved with a scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer and recorded with a photomultiplier and a multichannel scaler. Measurements of the relative intensities of the fluorescence components in relation to the buffer-gas pressures yielded the absolute (thermally averaged) cross sections for Zeeman mixing and cross sections for relaxation of the atomic multipole moments for collisions with He, Ne, and Ar.