An exacting transition probability measurement - a direct test of atomic many-body theories.

A new protocol for measuring the branching fraction of hydrogenic atoms with only statistically limited uncertainty is proposed and demonstrated for the decay of the P3/2 level of the barium ion, with precision below 0.5%. Heavy hydrogenic atoms like the barium ion are test beds for fundamental physics such as atomic parity violation and they also hold the key to understanding nucleo-synthesis in stars.

Four-wave-mixing coherent oscillator with frequency shifted feedback and misaligned pump waves.

The effect of the pump waves misalignment on the oscillation spectra and oscillation intensity of a semilinear photorefractive oscillator is studied numerically and compared with the results of the experiment performed with a KNbO3:Fe,Ag crystal.

Strong lowering of the mirrorless optical oscillation threshold by angular mismatches for nonlocal photorefractive nonlinearity.

We show that the introduction of an angular mismatch for the pump waves results, in the case of nonlocal photorefractive nonlinearity, in a strong almost twofold decrease of the threshold value of the coupling strength for the mirrorless optical oscillation. This surprising feature will lead to a strong modification of the threshold and near-threshold behavior of a vast variety of optical oscillators based on the photorefractive phase conjugation and involving finite-size light beams.

Semilinear coherent optical oscillator with frequency shifted feedback.

It is shown that the saw-tooth variation of the cavity length in a photorefractive semilinear coherent oscillator can suppress the instability in the frequency domain and prevent a bifurcation in the oscillation spectrum. To achieve such a suppression the frequency of the cavity length modulation should be chosen appropriately. It depends on the photorefractive crystal parameters (electrooptic properties, photoconductivity, dimensions) and on the experimental conditions (pump intensity ratio, orientation of the pump and oscillation waves with respect to the crystallographic axes, polarization of the pump waves, etc.