Description of effects of ground state optical pumping with modulated light based on a dressed-atom model

Krystyna Kolwas, M. Kolwas

W. Happer, B.S. Mathur

Real and virtual absorption of weak monochromatic light is analyzed with semiclassical radiation theory. The influence of the light on the atoms is described by an effective ground-state Hamiltonian operator, and the effect of the atoms on the light is described by a dielectric susceptibility operator. These operators are expressed explicitly in terms of familiar ground-state observables, angular factors, oscillator strengths, and plasma dispersion functions. The theory gives a comprehensive description of optical pumping, light shifts, and light modulation due to real and virtual absorption of light, and several new effects are predicted. Repopulation of the atomic ground state from a polarized excited state is not considered in this paper.

A. Besedina, Gennadij I. Khvostenko, М. П. Чайка

C.G. Aminoff, M. Pinard

We consider optical pumping with a quasi monochromatic tunable light beam, in the low intensity limit where a rate equation regime is obtained The velocity selective optical pumping (V.S.O.P.) introduces a correlation between atomic velocity and internal variables in the ground (or metastable) state. The aim of this article is to evaluate these atomic observables (orientation, alignment, population) as a function of velocity, using a phenomenological description of the relaxation effect of collisions. The V.S.O.P. line shapes, obtained by scanning the pumping beam frequency and using a counterpropagating detection beam with the same frequency, are given in various circumstances. The combination of V.S.O.P. with modulated pumping, magnetic resonance, and level crossing methods is considered; the corresponding line shapes can provide useful information on the relaxation characteristics, such as collision rates and kernels.

V. G. Domelunksen, I. V. Zhurkin, A. Yu. Nikolaev +1 more

Claude N. Cohen-Tannoudji