To overcome the problem of Doppler broadening without cooling down the sample to millikelvin temperatures, a classical pump–probe scheme is used. A laser with a relatively high intensity is sent through the atomic vapor, known as the pump beam. Another counter-propagating weak beam is also sent through the atoms at the same frequency, known as the probe beam. The absorption of the probe beam is recorded on a photodiode for various frequencies of the beams.
Although the two beams are at the same frequency, they address different atoms due to natural thermal motion. If the beams are red-detuned with respect to the atomic transition frequency, then the pump beam will be absorbed by atoms moving towards the beam source, while the probe beam will be absorbed by atoms moving away from that source at the same speed in the opposite direction. If the beams are blue-detuned, the opposite occurs.
If, however, the laser is approximately on resonance, these two beams address the same atoms, those with velocity vectors nearly perpendicular to the direction of laser propagation. In the two-state approximation of an atomic transition, the strong pump beam will cause many of the atoms to be in the excited state; when the number of atoms in the ground state and the excited state are approximately equal, the transition is said to be saturated. When a photon from the probe beam passes through the atoms, there is a good chance that, if it encounters an atom, the atom will be in the excited state and will thus undergo stimulated emission, with the photon passing through the sample. Thus, as the laser frequency is swept across the resonance, a small dip in the absorption feature will be observed at each atomic transition (generally hyperfine resonances). The stronger the pump beam, the wider and deeper the dips in the Gaussian Doppler-broadened absorption feature become. Under perfect conditions, the width of the dip can approach the natural linewidth of the transition.
A consequence of this method of counter-propagating beams on a system with more than two states is the presence of crossover lines. When two transitions are within a single Doppler-broadened feature and share a common ground state, a crossover peak at a frequency exactly between the two transitions can occur. This is the result of moving atoms seeing the pump and probe beams resonant with two separate transitions. The pump beam can cause the ground state to be depopulated, saturating one transition, while the probe beam finds much fewer atoms in the ground state because of this saturation, and its absorption falls. These crossover peaks can be quite strong, often stronger than the main saturated absorption peaks.