In situ density measurement for a thermal lithium beam employing diode lasers

We introduce a method for a spatially and temporally resolved density measurement of atomic beams. A semiconductor diode laser was employed for measuring both the absorption and the laser induced fluorescence emerging from the beam. Absorption measurements give an absolute value for the line integrated density, whereas laser induced fluorescence yields the relative density distribution. Thus, we were able to determine nondestructively absolute density distributions of thermal particle beams.