New aspects in the self-broadening of alkali resonance lines

Abstract

In addition to previous absorption measurements of Cs resonance lines, new investigations on Na, K and Rb also showed definitely that beyond symmetrical Lorentzian central parts of the lines, the stronger components of the resonance lines have blue and the weaker components red asymmetry. This behaviour can be explained by a quasistatic treatment of the self-broadening mechanism taking interatomic interaction potentials into account. But with additional data it is now possible to give a different interpretation of the origin of observed asymmetries than suggested in the previous paper on Cs resonance lines (see abstr. A5740 of 1975). The asymmetries are shown to arise from the mutual repulsion of two potential curves of the same species.