Atoms in a spin

Takeuchi, M, Ichihara, S, Kumakura, M +4 more

We report observation of the paramagnetic Faraday rotation of spin-polarized ytterbium (Yb) atoms. As the sample of the atoms, we used atomic beam, released atom from magneto-optical trap (MOT), and trapped atoms in far-off-resonant trap (FORT). Since Yb is diamagnetic and has spin-1/2 isotope, it is an ideal sample for the spin physics, such as quantum non-demolition measurement of spin (spin QND), for example. From the results of the rotation angle, we confirmed that the atoms were almost perfectly polarized.

Pieter Kok

Pieter Kok

Ryohei Sakamoto

Atomtronics, a technique to control atoms for an application of devices, has been studied in recent years.The purpose of this thesis is to propose a novel method to control atoms for the application to the atomtronics.To achieve this purpose, we use a spin current in a spin-orbit (SO) coupled cold atoms.The spin current, that is a counterflow of particles with different spins, has attracted attention as a method to control electrons.On the other hand, the artificial SO coupled cold atoms were experimentally realized in 2011 and have been studied theoretically and experimentally.We can expect that a spin current can be formed in the SO coupled cold atoms because the SO coupling is known to induce a spin current and controlled because the cold atoms have various experimentally controllable parameters.However, little has been studied so far on the spin current in the cold atom.Therefore, we studied novel controllability of the spin current in the SO coupled cold atom.An SO coupled Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) was experimentally realized in 2011 and then an SO coupled degenerate fermions became available in 2012.In these systems, since the SO coupling was engineered in a neutral atom by dressing two atomic spin states with a pair of Raman lasers and an external magnetic field, it is called artificial SO coupling.In addition, some parameters such as intensity of the SO coupling can be experimentally tuned by the lasers and the external magnetic field in the artificial SO coupled cold atoms.Therefore, by investigating parameter dependence of the spin currents, we reveal controllability of the atoms in the artificial SO coupled Bose and Fermi systems.As a result, in the SO coupled Bose system, the spin current changes discontinuously and non-smoothly across the phase boundaries, while in the SO coupled Fermi system, the spin current changes continuously and smoothly at zero temperature.On the other hand, Bose-Fermi mixture was experimentally realized and have been studied from different viewpoints.Therefore, we can expect to realize an artificial SO coupled Bose-Fermi mixture in near future.In this system, since atoms of different quantum statistics coexist under an influence of the SO coupling, novel phenomena can be expected.Based on these ideas, we investigate a ground state and a spin current in a mixture of fermions and SO coupled bosons.The ground states are calculated in the SO coupled Bose-Fermi mixture with high density or low density of the atoms by using a variational method and some approximations such as tight-binding approximation.For the high density, the fermions have a large influence on the Bose system, while, for the low density, the fermions have little influence although the relative amounts of the bosons and the fermions are comparable in the two cases.In addition, we show that the spin current of the i

Valerio Magnasco

Junjian Tang, Yan Yin, Yueyang Zhai +4 more

In this paper, we experimentally study transient dynamics of spin polarized atoms in the spin-exchange-relaxation-free (SERF) regime with a single-beam configuration. We pumped atoms with a weak detuning pumping beam, along with a sequence of magnetic field pulses orthogonal to the pumping beam were applied. The dynamics of atomic spin, which experiences Larmor precession under the perturbation of magnetic field, is detected by the transmitted pumping beam. Benefited from the long coherence time of atomic spin in the SERF regime, the dependence of precession frequency and decay rate, which is equal to the magnetic resonance linewidth of atomic spin, on magnetic fields is studied with the transient dynamics of atomic spin in the limit of low spin polarization. Moreover, we demonstrate that coil constants can be calibrated by analyzing the precession frequency of the transient dynamics of atomic spin. And the experimental results show that the coil constants are 114.25 ± 0.02 nT/mA and 114.12 ± 0.04 nT/mA in x- and y-axis, respectively. This method is particularly applicable to study the atomic spin dynamics and calibrate the coil constant in situ of a miniature single-beam SERF magnetometer.