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Abstract This paper presents a new method of purely optical spectroscopy of rubidium Rydberg states in a room-temperature gas cell. The atoms are excited into the Rydberg state from the ground state with a three-step diode laser cascade setup. The excitation of Rydberg states is monitored by observing the absorption of the laser performing the first excitation step on the strong rubidium D2 line. Different polarization schemes and possible excitation geometries are discussed. Keywords: Rydberg statesdiode lasershigh-resolution spectroscopy Acknowledgements Th.B thanks M. Scully for the kind invitation to the PQE 2009 conference and hospitality during the TAMU meeting. This work was stimulated by discussions with B. Varcoe and G. Welch during these meetings. This work was supported by the DFG Cluster of Excellence, Munich Centre for Advanced Photonics. P.T. thanks the Marie Curie Network Conquest for financial support.
Thoumany et al. (Wed,) studied this question.