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Physical Review A

Skew light propagation in optically thick optical pumping cells

Bien Chann, Earl Babcock, L. W. Anderson, Thad G Walker

Published Sep 27, 2002• 46 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Circularly polarized light propagating at an angle to the external magnetic field does not optically pump atoms to full transparency under conditions common to spin-exchange optical pumping experiments. This causes excess absorption of the pumping light that can significantly reduce the efficiency of the optical pumping process even for angles of a few degrees.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.66.033406

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Circularly polarized light propagating at an angle to the external magnetic field does not optically pump atoms to full transparency under conditions common to spin-exchange optical pumping experiments. This causes excess absorption of the pumping light that can significantly reduce the efficiency of the optical pumping process even for angles of a few degrees.
Atomics magnetometers achieve remarkable accuracy, applying to production and scientific research. However, their size and bulk components make it difficult to achieve higher accuracy. We investigate the influence of the skew angle of the pump beam on the optical pumping rate in an atomic magnetometer. An analysis based on the Bloch equation is proposed to decrease evaluate optical errors in the process of production and assembly. When the incident angle is non-zero, the pumping rate has a projection in the direction of a static magnetic field. By establishing the pumping rate equation, the pumping rate of each position in the vapor cell in the direction of static magnetic field at different pump light skew angles is calculated in our study. The sensitivity was measured experimentally to demonstrate the simulation results. The results indicate that the optical pumping rate decreases as the amplitude of skew angle and propagation distance increasing which can be evaluated by one-dimensional distribution while the decay rate increases with the rise of the angle. The simulation values of the rubidium pumping rate, obtained with an incident angle of 0.5° , in the center of the vapor cell are reduced by 46%. The sensitivity decreases with the increasing skew angle similar to the attenuation trend of the optical pumping rate but not the same. Our work provides a reference for evaluating the optical error of atomic magnetometer which is useful for miniaturization design.
The polarization rotation of a linearly polarized optical (probe) field caused by a left-circularly polarized pumping beam is studied in an opened two-level system of a 87 Rb atom. Letting a linearly polarized optical field (probe) and left-circularly polarized pumping beams co-propagate through a Rb vapor, we observe the featurable polarization rotation signals of the linearly polarized probe field via the asymmetric optical pumping with low intensities. Based on this phenomenon, a polarization-controlled light switching can be demonstrated at a low light level. Such a scheme of polarization rotation can be extended in a solid or semi-conduct material and find a practical application in all-optical information processing.
A new optical pumping scheme utilizing selective reflection is proposed and studied for the first time. This method enables us to observe the spin-polarization of atoms even at the high density, at which the pumping beam cannot be transmitted through a sample cell. Theoretical analysis shows that the light reflectivity at the glass-vapor interface is strongly dependent on the direction of the macroscopic magnetic moment of optical pumped atoms. Two types of demonstrating experiments are carried out with Cs and Rb vapors at the temperature ∼ 200°C. In the transverse pumping experiment with a modulated laser beam, asymmetry of the magnetic resonance signal with respect to the inversion of the magnetic field direction is observed as predicted by the theory. In the longitudinal pumping experiment, the transfer of a large amount of the magnetic moment by spin-exchange collisions is directly observed.
We have performed quantitative measurements of the variation of the on-resonance absorption coefficients ${\ensuremath{\kappa}}_{0}$ of the four hyperfine components of the Cs D1{D}_{1}D1​ transition as a function of laser power PPP, for pumping with linearly and with circularly polarized light. Sublevel populations derived from rate equations assuming isotropic population relaxation (at a rate ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{1}$) yield algebraic ${\ensuremath{\kappa}}_{0}(P)$ dependences that do not reproduce the experimental findings from Cs vapor in a paraffin-coated cell. However, numerical results that consider spin-exchange relaxation (at a rate ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{se}}$) and isotropic relaxation fit the experimental data perfectly well. The fit parameters, viz., the absolute value of ${\ensuremath{\kappa}}_{0}$, the optical pumping saturation power Psat{P}_{\mathrm{sat}}Psat​, and the ratio ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{se}}/{\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{1}$, are well described by the experimental conditions and yield absolute values for ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{1}$ and ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{se}}$. The latter is consistent with the previously published Cs-Cs spin-exchange relaxation cross section.
We experimentally study the Rb-Xe spin-exchange optical pumping process. The dependence of the spin-exchange rate on the intensity of the pumping light is measured at different temperatures under low magnetic fields. We demonstrate that the spin-exchange rate will decrease as the Rb spin polarization increases, which agrees well with the theoretical prediction. In our measurement, three spin exchange and spin relaxation mechanisms, namely, the spin exchange rates between Rb and Xe atoms caused by van der Waals molecule (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathrm{vdW}}$) and binary collision (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathrm{bin}}$) processes, and the spin relaxation rate due to the wall collision of Xe atoms (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathrm{w}}$), have comparable magnitudes. These rates are extracted separately from the measured data with different Rb spin polarization at various temperatures. Our work provides a comprehensive confirmation of the physical picture of the spin-exchange optical pumping process.