Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Magneto-optical processes in atomic vapor cells with radiation wavelength-scale thickness

A. Papoyan, David G. Sarkisyan

Published Dec 22, 2008• 1 citation

Abstract

Sub-Doppler nature of atomic spectra in alkali metal vapor cells of nanometric thickness L (nanocells) allows one to study peculiarities of magneto-optical processes, which occur in a magnetic field for the case when L is of the order of λ (λ is a laser resonant wavelength). We particularly address the issues of practical implementation of the studied processes. The following results are presented. i) A "λ-Zeeman technique" exploiting velocity-selective optical pumping resonances in L = λ Rb cell placed in a B-field, which allows direct determination frequency shifts and modification of transition probabilities of individual Zeeman transitions in magnetic field and is applicable for development of wide-range (~ 0.1 - 1000 mT) optical magnetometers and tunable frequency reference. ii) A technique for locking the laser radiation frequency, B-field-tunable in ~ 500 MHz range, which is based on selective reflection of a circularly-polarized laser beam from Rb vapor cell with thickness L ≈ λ/2.

DOI: 10.1117/12.822451

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