Figure 1 | Scientific Reports

Figure 1

From: Investigation of return photons from sodium laser beacon excited by a 40-watt facility-class pulsed laser for adaptive optical telescope applications

Figure 1

(a) Energy level diagram of the sodium D2 line, showing D2a transitions that can be produced by irradiation with circularly polarized light inducing ∆M = 1 absorptive transitions. The numbers between the ground and excited states or the widths of the arrows indicate the relative transition strengths. (b) Doppler-broadened hyperfine structure of the sodium D2 transition at mesospheric temperatures near 190 K. The splitting is almost entirely due to the splitting in the 32S1/2 ground state.

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