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Biographical Memoirs Volume 83 (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Arthur Schawlow
Pages 196-215

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From page 197...
... He was awarclecl the ~ 98 ~ Nobel Prize in physics for "contributions to the clevelopment of laser spectroscopy." His early work incluclecl examination of the shapes, raclial charge distributions, en cl moments of nuclei, the first microwave spectroscopy of a free raclical, ant! coauthoring a wiclely usecl text on microwave spectroscopy.
From page 198...
... This en cl his engineering interests lecl him to record en cl collect jazz records, an avocation he continued during his entire career. This resulted in an extensive jazz record collection that is now in the Stanford University archives.
From page 199...
... The University of Toronto was outstanding in spectroscopy, en c! I knew professors there, such as Harry Welsh, who toIcl me that Arthur SchawTow wouIcl be a goocl person for this postcloctoral position en c!
From page 200...
... I would have wan tell our collaboration to continue, with him on the Columbia faculty, however I was moving into the chairmanship of the physics department at Columbia, en cl potential claims of nepotism macle it impractical for me to be instrumental in putting my new brother-in-law on the faculty. He accepted a position at Bell Telephone Laboratories in late 1951 en cl left Columbia.
From page 201...
... In 1961 Arthur left Bell Laboratories to join the faculty at Stanford University, where he remained until he retired to emeritus status in 1996. During this time he embarkocl on his remarkable career cleveloping laser spectroscopy.
From page 202...
... The comnanv's motto: "We fly by night." Art was chairing a session of an optical pumping conference in 1959 when Gordon Gould presented a paper entitled "The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation," thus introducing the acronym that was to soon replace the "optical maser." At the end of the paper Chairman SchawTow could not resist a comment. As Don Nelson of Bell Laboratories recalls, "Beginning with mock solemnity and ending in belly-shaking laughter, Art opined that the laser was likely to be most used as an oscillator and so should be named 'light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation,' or the LOSER."i Once he gave a physics colloquium at Stanford entitled "Is Spectroscopy Dead?
From page 203...
... of Quan tom Electronics in ~ 971. This experiment stimulated an experiment done by Herwig Kogeinik and Charles Shank at Bell Laboratories, where they irradiated a gelatin film with the interference pattern of two laser beams, making the first distributed feedback laser.
From page 204...
... Arthur SchawTow's thesis research, in close collaboration with Professor Malcolm Crawford, lecl him into highresolution spectroscopy en cl stucly of nuclear characteristics by atomic spectroscopy. His student work produced seven publications, mostly on nuclear spins en cl magnetic movements.
From page 205...
... After all, I hacl myself workocl with Fabry-Perot systems but somehow missed the idea. Because we felt optical en cl infrared masers clearly shouIcl be patented, en cl I cleciclecl to interpret my own icleas as belonging to Bell Laboratories, from then on we kept the laser iclea as a proprietary secret until a patent was prepared in mid-1958.
From page 206...
... Art's studies of the properties of the narrow Ret en cl R2 resonance lines in ruby4 generated significant interest, but he eventually rejected the R lines as a potential lasing cancliciate at the Quantum Electronics Conference.5 Art was skeptical that a goocl lasing transition couIcl terminate in the ground state, en cl suggested insteacl the near-neighbor pair lines in ruby he hac! also been studying as a means of obtaining a 4-level system.6 In this case Art's intuition provecl wrong.
From page 207...
... a remarkable series of experiments in which narrow atomic and molecular lines could be observed without the inhomogeneous broadening clue to the Doppler effect. Using a prism-tunecI, single-mocle argon ion laser, TecI, Marc Levenson, en cl Art resolvecl the hyperfine lines of molecular iodine.
From page 208...
... Other advances cluring this time incluclecl the two-photon Doppler-free spectroscopy of sodium using a CW dye laser with Ted Hansch et al.,~6 near-resonant enhancement of two-photon spectra with Sune Svanberg et al.,~7 observation of quantum beats with Serge Haroche en cl Jeff Paisner,~8 ant! Doppler-free opto-galvanic spectroscopy with James Lawler, Allister Ferguson et al.,~9~20 en cl polarization intermoclulation spectroscopy with Tell Hansch et al.2i Also cluring this time William Fairbank, Jr., and Gary Klauminzer studied the excited-state absorption spectra of ruby, emerald, and MgO:Cr3+,22 and Fairbank demonstrated that it was possible
From page 209...
... lose kinetic energy by preferentially scattering laser light opposing the motion of the atoms clue to the Doppler effect. They macle a rough estimate of the final temperature by assuming that the initial Doppler width of the absorption line couIcl be reclucecl to the natural line width of the scattering transition.
From page 210...
... laser cooling en c! atom trapping methods to achieve Bose condensation of a clilute alkali gas.
From page 211...
... Hyperfine quantum beats observed in Cs vapor under pulsed dye laser excitation.
From page 212...
... Absolute measurement of very low sodium vapor densities using laser resonance fluorescence.
From page 213...
... Infrared and optical masers.
From page 214...
... Hyperfine quantum beats observed in Cs vapor under pulsed dye laser excitation.
From page 215...
... Identification of absorption lines by modulated lower-level population: Spectrum of Na2.


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