Eur. Phys. J. D 26, 307-318 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2003-00294-2

Optical manipulation of long-range interactions at the 3s+3p asymptote of Na₂

¹ Institut für Quantenoptik, Universität Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany
² Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Campus d'Orsay, Bâtiment 505, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France

Corresponding authors: ^a falke@iqo.uni-hannover.de - ^b tiemann@iqo.uni-hannover.de

Received: 29 July 2003
Revised: 7 October 2003
Published online: 21 November 2003

Abstract

We investigate the influence of a laser field, which is near-resonant to the atomic sodium 3²P_1/2 3²D_3/2 transition, on the last bound levels of the A state in Na₂. In a molecular beam experiment level shifts up to ≈ 100 MHz and light induced line broadenings were observed using an optical double resonance excitation scheme. Moreover, the coupling laser can reduce the number of bound levels of the A state by one or more units, which effectively means that in the picture of a collision of a 3²S_1/2 and a 3²P_1/2-atom the scattering phase is altered by more than π. The observed effects are interpreted as light induced couplings of the A state, which correlates to the asymptote, to the and  states at the asymptote. We performed multi-channel calculations, applying the mapped Fourier grid method, which reproduce our experimentally observed level shifts well.