Optical response of a diatomic system with allowance for the dipole-dipole interaction

The optical response of a diatomic system excited by monochromatic light is studied. On the basis of a semiclassical approach, the effects of rearrangement of the energy spectrum of the system due to the dipole-dipole interaction and the effects related to variations in the orientation of the atomic dipole moments under the action of microscopic fields are jointly taken into account. The strongest response of the system is shown to occur at dimensional resonance frequencies. The number of observed intensity peaks depends on the position of the observation point with respect to the interatomic axis. The frequencies of the dimensional resonances are compared with other characteristic frequencies of the atomic spectrum. (C) 2003 MAIK "Nauka/Interperiodica".