Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Velocity selective optical pumping resonance sign reversal
A. Krasteva, Dimitar G. Slavov, G. Todorov, S. Cartaleva
Abstract
We report experimental and theoretical examinations of the peculiarities in Velocity Selective Optical Pumping (VSOP) resonance behavior at open and closed hyperfine transition spectra of Cs atoms (on the D2 line), confined in optical cell with thickness L = 6λ, where λ = 852 nm. For linear and circular polarizations of the irradiating light, open transitions exhibit reduced absorption (fluorescence) VSOP resonances whose contrast increases with atomic concentration and light intensity. However, in case of closed transition the situation is different, the enhanced absorption (fluorescence) VSOP resonance reverses its sign with the atomic concentration and light intensity. Theoretical analysis based on the density matrix formalism, taking into account the statistical tensors describing atomic population and longitudinal alignment, shows that the VSOP resonance sign reversal at the closed transition can be attributed to the efficiency reduction of population transfer by the spontaneous decay with atomic source temperature.