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Phys. Rev. A 80, 053406 (2009) [22 pages]

Light-induced polarization effects in atoms with partially resolved hyperfine structure and applications to absorption, fluorescence, and nonlinear magneto-optical rotation

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M. Auzinsh*
Department of Physics and Laser Center, University of Latvia, 19 Rainis Boulevard, Riga LV-1586, Latvia

D. Budker†
Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA and Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

S. M. Rochester‡
Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA

Received 21 August 2009; published 9 November 2009

The creation and detection of atomic polarization is examined theoretically through the study of basic optical-pumping mechanisms and absorption and fluorescence measurements and the dependence of these processes on the size of ground- and excited-state hyperfine splittings is determined. The consequences of this dependence are studied in more detail for the case of nonlinear magneto-optical rotation in the Faraday geometry (an effect requiring the creation and detection of rank-two polarization in the ground state) with alkali-metal atoms. Analytic formulas for the optical rotation signal under various experimental conditions are presented.

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.053406
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.80.053406
PACS:
32.80.Xx, 32.10.Fn, 42.50.Gy, 32.30.Dx

*marcis.auzins@lu.lv

†budker@berkeley.edu

‡simonr@berkeley.edu

 
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