Method for determining the quality of an antirelaxation coating in optical cells

Abstract

A simple method is proposed to determine the quality of antirelaxation coatings of the walls of vacuum optical cells containing alkali metal vapors. The method involves recording the time dependence of the fluorescence intensity of alkali atoms during exposure of the cell by resonant radiation pulses. Theory predicts that to determine the coating quality, it is sufficient to know the fluorescence decay rate and the ratio of the fluorescence intensities at the beginning and end of the pulse laser.