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arXiv:2107.04942

Collision-induced spin noise

Shiming Song, Min Jiang, Yushu Qin, Yu Tong, Wenzhe Zhang, Xi Qin, Ren‐Bao Liu, Xinhua Peng

Published Jul 11, 2021• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Collision phenomena are ubiquitous and of importance in determining the microscopic structures and intermolecular interactions of atoms and molecules. The existing approaches are mostly based on atomic or molecular scatterings, which are hindered by the inconvenience of using ultra-high vacuum and low temperature systems. Here we demonstrate a new spin-noise spectroscopic approach by measuring optical polarization rotation noise of the probe light, which operates with simple apparatus and ambient conditions. Our approach features tens of gigahertz bandwidth and one part-per-million resolution, outperforming existing spin-noise techniques. Enabled by the new technique, we observe the collision-induced spin noise of alkali atoms, and precisely determine key collision parameters, such as collision diameter, well depth, and dominant interaction type. Our work provides a new tool to study a broad range of collision phenomena under ambient conditions.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2107.04942

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Collision phenomena are ubiquitous and of importance in determining the microscopic structures and intermolecular interactions of atoms and molecules. The existing approaches are mostly based on atomic or molecular scatterings, which are hindered by the inconvenience of using ultra-high vacuum and low temperature systems. Here we demonstrate a new spin-noise spectroscopic approach by measuring optical polarization rotation noise of the probe light, which operates with simple apparatus and ambient conditions. Our approach features tens of gigahertz bandwidth and one part-per-million resolution, outperforming existing spin-noise techniques. Enabled by the new technique, we observe the collision-induced spin noise of alkali atoms, and precisely determine key collision parameters, such as collision diameter, well depth, and dominant interaction type. Our work provides a new tool to study a broad range of collision phenomena under ambient conditions.
Collision phenomena are important in determining the structures and interactions of atoms and molecules. A broad concern is how to investigate collisions $i\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}n$ $s\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}i\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}t\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}u$ under wide-ranging experimental conditions. To this end, the authors develop a spin-noise spectroscopic approach to measure key collision parameters in alkali atoms and inert atoms or molecules. The technique offers broad bandwidth (tens of GHz) and fine resolution (1 ppm), outperforming existing spin-noise methods. This approach is expected to aid research on a great range of collision phenomena under ambient conditions, such as nonperturbative study of cold atom-molecule collisions.
The recent technical advances in the creation of rapidly rotating light polarizations are shown to provide new tools to explore elastic and inelastic scattering phenomena. In the case of inelastic scattering, the light fluoresced by atoms or molecules coherently excited by a rapidly rotating linear polarization is expected to exhibit new resonances. Such resonances, due to the transfer of coherence from light to atoms or molecules, are theoretically studied and experimentally observed. They provide simple methods to probe atomic internal constants, such as energy level life-times. The analogy between those resonances and the Hanle effect suggests new experiments in atomic physics. In the case of elastic scattering such as the one encountered during propagation through a dense turbid medium, the rotating linear polarization is shown to be an ideal tool to extract the ballistic photons from the large background of diffused light. This permits to image tiny objects embedded in a dense turbid medium, with an experimental resolution similar to the one obtained in usual homogeneous optical system.
A cold collision between atoms and molecules (<1 K) is one of the hot research fields in atomic and molecular physics. At low temperatures, the number of partial waves participating in the collision process decreases dramatically, and quantum phenomena start to emerge. The reaction is often dominated by quantum tunneling, and pronounced resonances can exist on collision cross sections. Here, we report on an apparatus designed for studying cold collisions between metastable noble gas atoms and alkali atoms. Our apparatus features a combined Magneto-Optical-Trap (MOT) and velocity map imaging (VMI) system. The center of a Rb MOT is overlapped with the VMI system. Cold Kr* atoms are launched toward the Rb atoms to induce Kr* + Rb reactions. The collision energy between the two species can be varied from 100 mK to 20 K. With this setup, we are planning to explore the quantum phenomena in Kr* + Rb cold collisions, including the shape resonance and stereodynamics in the reaction.
We present measurements of differential elastic cross sections for various alkali-alkali pairs, as well as the angular dependence of the probability of electron spin exchange in these collisions. The resolution is sufficient to reveal interference structure in the angular dependence of both quantities. We describe our apparatus, which polarizes one incident beam and analyzes the polarization of the scattered atoms, and discuss the measurement and data-reduction procedures. Results are presented in the range 0.1-0.2 eV for the systems Na-Cs, Na-Rb, Na-K, K-Cs, and K-Rb.
Collision physics plays a key role in understanding the properties of ultracold gases. First, collisions ensure thermalization in trapped atomic samples, which is essential for the success of evaporative cooling. Second, interactions between atoms determine the equilibrium shape and the dynamics of the condensate once it is formed. Finally collisions limit the achievable spatial densities via inelastic processes, which ultimately determine whether a given atomic species may lead to Bose-Einstein condensation. The purpose of the following lectures is to give a basic introduction to collision physics with a special emphasis on the low temperature aspect of these interactions. We will consider here only binary interactions between atoms since one of the remarkable prop-erties of the physics of ultra-cold dilute gases is that all the macroscopic properties of the system can be directly deduced from the two-body interaction potential. In particular the essential concept of scattering length will be introduced and developped for some simple potentials, using as practical examples experimental results obtained on atomic cesium and rubidium. The present lectures are complementary to the ones given by D. Heinzen where a detailed comparison between the collisional properties of the various alkali atoms will be found, together with explanations of the spectroscopic approaches used in the precise determination of interatomic potentials. 1. – Scattering theory: a brief reminder 1.1. Collision between two particles. – We consider here an elementary collision process between two particles 1 and 2 with the same mass M, interacting through the potential
We study atom-molecule inelastic scattering in a trapped alkali metal gas at ultracold temperature. We derive the atom-molecule Hamiltonian in the presence of hyperfine interactions and introduce angular momentum coupling schemes suited to the description of the short-and long-range physics of the collision. We provide a first estimate of the relative importance of rotational, hyperfine-changing, and spin-changing transitions within a simple rigid-rotor model. We also investigate the occurrence of resonance phenomena near the atom-molecule energy threshold.