Collisional revival of magnetic grating free-induction decay

Summary form only given. A ground-state coherence grating involving the magnetic sublevels of the F=3 ground state in /sup 85/Rb is created in Doppler-broadened vapor using an excitation pulse that consists of two traveling waves with orthogonally polarized wave vectors. The decay of the grating that is due to thermal motion is probed by a traveling-wave readout pulse. This results in a scattered signal magnetic grating free-induction decay (MGFID) that is detected using a heterodyne technique. In our experiment, collisional revival can be expected when the mean free path is less than the grating spacing.