Separation and Identification of Overlapping Hyperfine Structure Components: Application to Mercury Resonance Radiation

Abstract

A new technique has been developed for the separation of overlapping lines in the hfs pattern of atomic energy levels. By a combination of magnetic scanning and double resonance it was possible to resolve the 2537 A line of mercury. By plotting the maxima of the microwave resonance versus scanning field, a separate curve was obtained for each $F$ level of the odd isotopes. In the same way we obtained a curve showing the maxima of the resonance signals from all of the even isotopes. Information about the odd isotopes obtained from a 3000-Mc/sec "double-resonance" experiment is also reported. Only minor disagreements with existing data were observed.