High Resolution Laser Spectroscopy of Cesium Vapor Layers with Nanometric Thickness

High resolution laser spectroscopy of alkali vapor contained in conventional thermal optical cells with centimeter dimensions is widely used for various applications: among them wavelength references, atomic clocks, precise optical magnetometers, slow and stored light etc. For all these photonic sensors, the reduction of their dimensions is of significant importance. One of the main concerns is to keep the parameters of the photonic sensor when reducing its size. In this chapter are presented the obtained by authors experimental and theoretical results concerning high-resolution spectroscopy of Cs vapor layer with nanometric thickness. The thickness of the vapor layer varies from 100 nm to about 5000 nm. The practical importance of this study is accompanied by numerous new peculiarities of atomic spectra of 1 D confined atoms, when the nanometric dimension approaches the wavelength of the irradiating light. These peculiarities in the absorption and fluorescence spectra represent a basic importance as well.