Issue Eur. Phys. J. D Volume 26, Number 3, October III 2003 Page(s) 307 - 318 Section Quantum Optics and Quantum Information DOI 10.1140/epjd/e2003-00294-2 Published online 21 November 2003

Eur. Phys. J. D 26, 307-318 (2003)
DOI: 10.1140/epjd/e2003-00294-2

Optical manipulation of long-range interactions at the 3s+3p asymptote of

Chr. Samuelis¹, St. Falke¹, T. Laue¹, P. Pellegrini², O. Dulieu², H. Knöckel¹ and E. Tiemann<sup>1

1</sup>  Institut für Quantenoptik, Universität Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany
²  Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Campus d'Orsay, Bâtiment 505, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France

falke@iqo.uni-hannover.de
tiemann@iqo.uni-hannover.de

(Received 29 July 2003 / Received in final form 7 October 2003 Published online 21 November 2003)

Abstract
We investigate the influence of a laser field, which is near-resonant to the atomic sodium 3 ²P _1/2 3 ²D _3/2 transition, on the last bound levels of the A state in Na ₂. In a molecular beam experiment level shifts up to 100 MHz and light induced line broadenings were observed using an optical double resonance excitation scheme. Moreover, the coupling laser can reduce the number of bound levels of the A state by one or more units, which effectively means that in the picture of a collision of a 3 ²S _1/2 and a 3 ²P _1/2-atom the scattering phase is altered by more than . The observed effects are interpreted as light induced couplings of the A state, which correlates to the 3s_1/2+3p_1/2 asymptote, to the and  states at the 3s_1/2+3d_3/2 asymptote. We performed multi-channel calculations, applying the mapped Fourier grid method, which reproduce our experimentally observed level shifts well.

PACS
34.50.Rk - Laser-modified scattering and reactions.
33.80.-b - Photon interactions with molecules.
42.62.Fi - Laser spectroscopy.

© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2003

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