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arXiv:1005.1617 · Physical Review Letters

Polarized Alkali-Metal Vapor with Minute-Long Transverse Spin-Relaxation Time

M. V. Balabas, Todor S. Karaulanov, M. P. Ledbetter, Dmitry Budker

Published Aug 12, 2010• 274 citations
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Abstract

We demonstrate lifetimes of Zeeman populations and coherences in excess of 60 sec in alkali-metal vapor cells with inner walls coated with an alkene material. This represents 2 orders of magnitude improvement over the best paraffin coatings. We explore the temperature dependence of cells coated with this material and investigate spin-exchange relaxation-free magnetometry in a room-temperature environment, a regime previously inaccessible with conventional coating materials.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.105.070801

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We present an experimental investigation of alkali atom vapor cells coated with a high quality anti-relaxation coating material based on alkenes. The prepared cells with single compound alkene based coating showed the longest spin relaxation times which have been measured up to now with room temperature vapor cells. Suggestions are made that chemical binding of a cesium atom and an alkene molecule by attack to the C=C bond plays a crucial role in such improvement of anti-relaxation coating quality.
We present an experimental investigation of alkali atom vapor cells coated with a high quality anti-relaxation coating material based on alkenes. The prepared cells with single compound alkene based coating showed the longest spin relaxation times which have been measured up to now with room temperature vapor cells. Suggestions are made that chemical binding of a cesium atom and an alkene molecule by attack to the C = C bond plays a crucial role in such improvement of anti-relaxation coating quality.
The dependence of both longitudinal and transverse relaxation times of ground-state magnetic polarisation in alkali atoms on the coating temperature is experimentally studied for the first time in a rubidium-vapour cell with 1-nonadecylbenzene antirelaxation coating of inner walls. The comparison of these times with the relaxation times in a caesium-vapour cell with alkane wall coatings is presented. It is found that within the studied temperature range the transverse relaxation time decreases with increasing temperature of alkene and 1-nonadecylbenzene coatings. For the alkane coating such a dependence was not explicitly found. The longitudinal relaxation time begins to decrease in all cases when passing a certain critical temperature of the coating material. It is found that the unsaturated radical structure of the coating material molecules strongly affects its antirelaxation properties.
Magnetic-field-gradient-induced spin polarization transverse relaxation is re-examined in an alkali-metal atomic cell with antirelaxation coating. The experimentally observed motional-narrowing effect in a paraffin-coated vapor cell, a phenomenon for depicting the suppression of spin polarization transverse relaxation caused by the magnetic-field gradient, is more than an order of magnitude weaker than theoretical predictions. Such a discrepancy is due to the existence of background gas. By taking the background gas into consideration, Redfield theory combined with the Langevin approach is proposed to depict the magnetic-field-gradient-induced spin relaxation in a coated cell, and the model is verified to be consistent with the previous results derived under two limits in which the mean free path is either much smaller (diffusion regime) or much larger than (ballistic regime) the cell size. Our work provides a potentially feasible method to evaluate the background gas pressure inside the coated cell, and it can help to foster better comprehension of the performance of an antirelaxation coated cell.