On the possibilities of sub-Doppler atomic spectroscopy in multilayer gas cells

Possibilities of high-resolution spectroscopy of atoms (or molecules) for optical pumping and probing with the use of a proposed cell with a series of plane-parallel thin gas layers between spatially separated regions of this cell are theoretically studied. It is shown that efficient velocity selection of optically pumped atoms is possible in view of their characteristic transit and collisional relaxation in such a cell, which leads to the formation of narrow sub-Doppler resonances in absorption of a probe monochromatic wave. The resolution of this spectroscopic method is analyzed in the cases of stationary and definite nonstationary optical pumping of atoms by broadband radiation for different geometrical parameters of these cells and pumping intensity. The proposed multilayer gas cell is a compact analog of a large number of parallel atomic (molecular) beams and can be the basis for new high-precision and compact optical frequency standards.