MULTIPHOTON MULTILASER EXCITATION OF SF6 IN A MOLECULAR-BEAM

Multiphoton experiments on SF6 in a molecular beam are performed utili zing cw CO2 waveguide lasers. In this PaPer the emphasis will be on th e non-spectroscopic aspects. (i) The saturation dip in one-photon tran sitions is measured. (ii) To investigate which rotational states parti cipate in the multiphoton process, an intra cavity laser is used as a pump laser, followed by a waveguide laser. Only hot band transitions s eem to be depleted. (iii) With the aid of two counter-propagating CO2 waveguide laser beams, new spectral regions were entered to investigat e two-photon transitions. In this way it is also possible to investiga te three- and more-photon transitions, because of the higher intensity (two lasers) and smaller intermediate detunings (two colours).