Magneto-Optical Spectroscopy in Strong Fields

Abstract

The present lectures are aimed at stimulating interest in atomic magneto-optical spectroscopy, which appears to be a rather neglected area of the strong field problem. Several lecture courses in the present volume recount the remarkable progress achieved in recent years in the understanding of spectral structure for atoms in high magnetic fields. A noteworthy feature of such progress is that semi-classical approximations achieve most, if not all, of the understanding required to interpret energy levels. Nevertheless, they do not provide any useful information on intensities, for which quantum mechanical methods are necessary. Thus, if we are interested in probing the quantum mechanical aspects of the strong field problem experimentally, measurements of photoabsorption cross sections or atomic f-values should play a key rôle. Unfortunately, a detailed and quantitative intensity map for the strong field problem presents a formidable challenge. There is an enormous complexity of structure, much of which is very sharp, so that it would be virtually impossible to measure oscillator strengths accurately for all of the individual lines.