MEASUREMENT OF ATOMIC POLARIZABILITIES USING FLOQUET SPECTROSCOPY

The complex network of Floquet states that results from an application of an external ac electric field to a collection of atoms is investig ated. It is shown that precision dc Stark spectroscopy can reveal the details of the quasienergy states, Floquet states, spawned by the appl ication of a rf field. Transitions to the Floquet sidebands of quadrat ic (dc) Stark states are found to have absorption intensities in good agreement with theory. This combination of dc and ac fields applied to atoms, Floquet spectroscopy, is then used to determine accurately the scalar and tensor polarizabilities of the 65p 2P state of sodium. Dev iations from quadratic behavior are investigated as well as the relati onship of our measured polarizability to previous measurements at lowe r principal quantum numbers.