On the fluorescence and channelled absorption spectra of cæsium and other alkali elements

Abstract

In 1874 it was shown by Roscoe and Schuster that channelled absorption spectra can be obtained with the vapours of the alkali elements sodium and potassium, and later on these spectra were investigated in some detail by Liveing and Dewar. It was also shown in 1896 by Weidemann and Schmidt that the vapours of these same metals emitted a radiation possessing characteristics of a fluorescence spectrum when they were traversed by white light. Since 1903 exhaustive studies have been made of both the fluorescence and the channelled absorption spectrum of sodium by R. W. Wood, together with a number of collaborators, Including J. H. Moore and F. E. Hackett. In these investigation it was shown that the channelled absorption spectrum of sodium was made up of a number of series of absorption bands, one set of series being on the red wave-length side of the D lines, and another lying in the visible blue-green region. In addition, series of absorption bands were found by them with approximately regular spacing in the neighbourhood of λ = 3303 A, the second member of the doublet series of this element. As regards the fluorescence spectrum of sodium, they found that, by stimulation of the vapour with approximately monochromatic light, there resulted an emission of light, the spectrum of which consisted of a number of bright but narrow bands of varying intensity, more or less regularly spaced both above and below the mean wave-length of the exciting light. They observed, too, that the slightest change in the wave-length of the exciting light resulted in the disappearance of one set of lines and in the appearance of another of different wave-lengths. In the various florescence spectra obtained by R. W. Wood when stimulating sodium vapour by monochromatic light from different sources, it was noted that there was a remarkable recurrence of the interval, ∆ λ = 52·3 A. in the spacing of the fluorescence bands.