Absolute absorption on the potassium D lines: Theory and experiment

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the absolute Doppler-broadened absorption of a probe beam scanned across the potassium D lines in a thermal vapour. Spectra using a weak probe were measured on the 4S → 4P transition and compared to the theoretical model of the electric susceptibility detailed by Zentile et al (2015 Comput. Phys. Commun. 189 162-74) in the code named ElecSus. Comparisons were also made on the 4S → 5P transition with an adapted version of ElecSus. This is the first experimental test of ElecSus on an atom with a ground state hyperfine splitting smaller than that of the Doppler width. An excellent agreement was found between ElecSus and experimental measurements at a variety of temperatures with rms errors ∼10-3. We have also demonstrated the use of ElecSus as an atomic vapour thermometry tool, and present a possible new measurement technique of transition decay rates which we predict to have a precision of ∼3 kHz.