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Physical Review A

Relaxation and generation of hyperfine coherences in an optically pumped heavy-alkali-metal vapor undergoing double-resonance excitation

Juan Antonio Vallés, J. M. Alvarez

Published Jul 1, 1996• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An extension of a theory of the relaxation, generation, and detection of Zeeman components in the presence of a weak static magnetic field to experiments where hyperfine coherences are also involved is presented. Our study focuses on the geometrical aspects of the optical-microwave double-resonance experiments without considering the transition-profile related phenomena. We determine the coupled evolution equations of the Zeeman and hyperfine components of the atomic density matrix in the irreducible formalism and calculate the stationary solutions to these equations. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.54.977

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An extension of a theory of the relaxation, generation, and detection of Zeeman components in the presence of a weak static magnetic field to experiments where hyperfine coherences are also involved is presented. Our study focuses on the geometrical aspects of the optical-microwave double-resonance experiments without considering the transition-profile related phenomena. We determine the coupled evolution equations of the Zeeman and hyperfine components of the atomic density matrix in the irreducible formalism and calculate the stationary solutions to these equations. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
The relaxation and generation of multipole orientations in a heavy-alkali-metal vapor in the presence of a weak static magnetic field are theoretically studied both for populations and for Zeeman coherences by taking into account the effects on the evolution of the atomic density matrix of the relaxation processes (by alkali-atom--buffer-gas, alkali-atom--alkali-atom with spin exchange and alkali-atom--cell-wall collisions) and of the optical pumping with any light polarization and spectral distribution. The dependence of the stationary-state multipole orientations on the pumping characteristic parameters is numerically analyzed. The detection process of these orientations is also studied.
The theory of several experiments involving optical pumping is presented in a simplified form. Vector methods are employed to discuss the hyperfine energy levels of an atom in a weak magnetic field, and, for the purposes of considering relaxation time, the system is assumed to have only two effective levels. The Breit-Rabi equation for the ground-state hyperfine Zeeman energy levels of an alkali atom is derived from the Schrödinger equation to facilitate the interpretation of the quadratic Zeeman effect. A number of suggestions for practical optical pumping experiments are made.
A generalized model for the magnetic resonance signal corresponding to the 0-0 hyperfine transition in an optically pumped alkali-metal vapor is presented. Under conditions of microwave power broadening, the model predicts ``anomalous'' light broadening and ``anomalous'' relaxation narrowing of the magnetic resonance linewidth. Good agreement between theory and experiment was obtained in an experiment that confirmed the prediction of anomalous light broadening. These results show that the 0-0 hyperfine transition cannot be described as a simple two-level system; rather, the alkali-atom's nuclear spin plays an important role in determining the magnetic resonance linewidth.
The absorption of a light wave interacting with optical transitions in the D1line of an alkali metal atom subjected to microwave radiation that is in resonance with magnetic dipole transitions between hyperfine ground-state components, has been investigated. It is known that when scanning a longitudinal magnetic field (B||k, wherekis the wavevector), one may observe a magneto-optical resonance due to the ground-state Hanle effect. In addition, the effect of double radio-optical resonance takes place because of the presence of the resonance microwave field. The joint influence of these effects on the formation of a narrow magneto-optical resonance in light wave absorption has been studied theoretically and experimentally. It has been shown analytically that the effects compete with each other and destructively act on the resonance formation. As a result, the amplitude of the resonance is small and its shape is complicated. However, in the presence of a buffer gas the pressure of which is such that the hyperfine splitting of the ground state remains spectrally unresolved, it becomes possible to observe a magneto-optical resonance with a relatively large amplitude. Experiments have been carried out with the use of a miniature glass cell (V~ 0.1 cm3) filled with87Rb vapor and a buffer gas argon (a pressure of about 95 Torr). In particular, the theoretically predicted resonance narrowing with increasing light field intensity has been experimentally observed. A configuration for magneto-optical resonance excitation suggested here may be applied in quantum magnetometry to measure weak permanent magnetic fields and resonance microwave fields using cells filled with alkali metal vapor.
Rate equations for the optical pumping of alkali-metal vapors simultaneously subject to pumping, relaxation in the excited state, and relaxation in the ground state are shown to yield analytic solutions for the alkali-metal electronic and nuclear-spin polarizations in the limit of weak pumping. Nuclear-spin and hyperfine-interaction effects are properly included. Analysis of the double-exponential form of the pumping transient of the ground-state electronic-spin polarization is shown to yield new methods for the measurement of cross sections for collisional relaxation in both the ground and excited states. Formulas are derived that relate relaxation cross sections to experimentally measurable parameters. Formulas describing the influence of nuclear spin on signals obtained from standard depolarization of resonance-radiation experiments also are provided. Ambiguities in earlier optical-pumping experiments and calculations arising from oversimplified descriptions of relaxation processes are discussed.