Excitation and emission spectra of rubidium in rare-gas thin-films

TL;DR

This study investigates the optical spectra of rubidium in rare-gas thin-films, revealing spectral behaviors, bleaching effects, and high sensitivity detection potential, with implications for solid-state atomic physics.

Contribution

It provides detailed two-dimensional spectral analysis of rubidium in argon, krypton, and xenon matrices, extending previous work and highlighting spectral complexities and bleaching phenomena.

Findings

Krypton and xenon show simple absorption-emission relations.

Argon exhibits complex spectral structures.

Rubidium detection sensitivity could reach single-atom levels.

Abstract

To understand the optical properties of atoms in solid state matrices, the absorption, excitation and emission spectra of rubidium doped thin-films of argon, krypton and xenon were investigated in detail. A two-dimensional spectral analysis extends earlier reports on the excitation and emission properties of rubidium in rare-gas hosts. We found that the doped crystals of krypton and xenon exhibit a simple absorption-emission relation, whereas rubidium in argon showed more complicated spectral structures. Our sample preparation employed in the present work yielded different results for the Ar crystal, but our peak positions were consistent with the prediction based on the linear extrapolation of Xe and Kr data. We also observed a bleaching behavior in rubidium excitation spectra, which suggests a population transfer from one to another spectral feature due to hole-burning. The observed optical response implies that rubidium in rare-gas thin-films is detectable with extremely high sensitivity, possibly down to a single atom level, in low concentration samples.