JOURNAL OF THE OPTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA VOLUME 51. NUMBER 6 JUNE. 1961

Hyperfine Structure and Isotope Shifts in the 2537-A Line of Mercury*

WALTER G. SCHWEITZER, JR.

National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D. C. (Received February 13, 1961)

THE hyperfine structure and isotope shifts in the 2537-A line of natural mercury have been measured with high precision

by using interferometric techniques on the absorption spectrum of an atomic beam. The measurements were made with a scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer and were all photoelectric. This inves­tigation will be fully described at a later date, but the results are of immediate interest and they will therefore be presented here. The components of the 2537-A line are designated in the usual way.1 The values given are averages over many measurements with each of two different spacers and the tolerances shown are standard deviations derived from the observations. The etalon spacers used for all but the 201b component were 218.2 and 215.7 mm long. For the 201b component the spacers used were 117.9 and 110.4 mm long. All of the components were measured relative to the 198 component. These results are tabulated in Table I. A number of pairs of the other components were also measured directly relative to each other. In Table II the hyperfine splittings are tabulated both as obtained from Table I and from

TABLE I. Hyperfine structure and isotope shifts relative to 198.

TABLE II. Hyperfine splittings.

TABLE III. Relative isotope shifts.

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the direct measurements where this was possible. Table I I I gives the isotope shifts relative to 198.

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Dr. K. G. Kessler, who suggested the problem and whose continued guidance and interest have made this work possible.

* This work is based on part of a thesis to be submitted to the Department of Physics, University of Maryland, in partial fulfillment of the require­ments for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

1 See, for example, P. Brix and H. Kopfermaπ, Landolt-Born stein (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1952), 6th ed. p. 3.

June 1961 L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R 693