Photon burst method

Tonn, J.H. Broadhurst, High resolution spectroscopy with minute samples. Opt. Commun. 23 236 (1977) D.A. Lewis, J.F. Tonn, S.L. Kaufman, G.W. Greenlees, Photon-burst method in high-reso-lution laser spectroscopy, Phys. Rev. Al9 1580 (1979). 

The method is based on the fact that one can excite coherently a set of overlapping resonances such that their decay exhibits a steplike behavior the system starts in a quiescent period in which no spontaneous emission occurs, followed by a photon burst in which spontaneous emission is greatly accelerated, followed by another quiescent period, and so on. The quiescent period (and subsequent photon bursts) is due to destructive and constructive interferences between the overlapping resonances. The reason it is impossible to suppress the decay over all times in this... 

This has an advantage over conventional, one-photon ionization methods which use rare gas resonance light sources. These are continuous sources and are used without focusing so that they irradiate a larger sample volume. However, there is a disadvantage to creating the electrons in short bursts. As the first electrons fly away from the... 

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