Precision absolute frequency laser spectroscopy of argon II in parallel and antiparallel geometry using a frequency comb for calibration

Abstract

A collinear fast ion beam laser apparatus was constructed and tested. It will be used on-line to the SLOW RI radioactive beam facility in RIKEN (Japan) and as in the present experiment for precision absolute frequency measurements of astrophysically important reference lines. In the current work we conducted absolute measurements of spectral lines of Ar ions using parallel and antiparallel geometries. To provide a reference for the laser wavelength iodine saturation spectroscopy was used. The precision of this reference was enhanced by simultaneously observing the beat node between the spectroscopy laser and the corresponding mode of a femtosecond laser frequency comb. When performing collinear and anticollinear measurements simultaneously for the laser induced fluorescence, the exact relativistic formula for the transition frequency v0 = pvcoll � vanticoll can be applied. In this geometry ion source instabilities due to pressure and anode voltage fluctuation are minimized. The procedure of fluorescence lineshapes fitting is discussed and the errors in the measurements are estimated. The result is v0 = 485, 573, 619.7 � 0.3MHz corresponding to (delta v)/v = 6 � 10?10 and is an improvement of two orders of magnitude over the NIST published value.