An experimental system was set up incorporating pulsed ion beam sputtering, two Nd:YAG pumped dye lasers and an imaging time-of-flight (TOF) analysis system. The system was used to perform state-selective analyses of neutral atoms sputtered from surfaces using resonant one-color and two-color ionization schemes. We have measured, for the first time, TOF mass spectra of Al atoms sputtered into the ground state 2 P1 / 20 and first excited state 2 P3 / 20 (with an excitation energy of 0.014 eV) from single crystals of Ni3Al and NiAl. The population ratio of the first excited state to the ground s...
