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Bulletin of the American Physical Society

Laser isotope separation of barium using an inhomogeneous magnetic field

William Arie van Wijngaarden, Jin-Sun Ki

Published May 1, 1993• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Isotopes of barium are selectively excited to a metastable state using a single ring dye laser. The excited atoms are then deflected out of an atomic beam by an inhomogeneous magnetic field. The deflection of the beam is studied using a hot wire detector and a quadrupole mass spectrometer. Measurements are presented showing that nearly all atoms of a particle isotope can be excited from the 6s{sup 2} ground still to the 6s5d state and subsequently spatially separated. This method of isotope separation requires metastable states having lifetimes greater than about 100 {mu}sec. These states can be readily excited from the ground state in atoms such as the Group II elements.

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Isotopes of barium are selectively excited to a metastable state using a single ring dye laser. The excited atoms are then deflected out of an atomic beam by an inhomogeneous magnetic field. The deflection of the beam is studied using a hot wire detector and a quadrupole mass spectrometer. Measurements are presented showing that nearly all atoms of a particle isotope can be excited from the 6s{sup 2} ground still to the 6s5d state and subsequently spatially separated. This method of isotope separation requires metastable states having lifetimes greater than about 100 {mu}sec. These states can be readily excited from the ground state in atoms such as the Group II elements.
We demonstrate an experimental technique that selects the nuclear spin I=0 isotope 138Ba^{138}\mathrm{Ba}138Ba for spectroscopic measurements from a beam of natural barium containing seven stable isotopes. A cw dye laser is used to optically pump the I=3/2 isotopes 135Ba^{135}\mathrm{Ba}135Ba and 137Ba^{137}\mathrm{Ba}137Ba into the metastable 6s5d 1^{1}1D2{\mathit{D}}_{2}D2​ and 3^{3}3D1,2{\mathit{D}}_{1,2}D1,2​ levels via the 6s6p 1^{1}1P1{\mathit{P}}_{1}P1​ excited state, leaving nearly pure 138Ba^{138}\mathrm{Ba}138Ba in the ground state. Photoionization spectra of the excited 5d6p 3^{3}3D1{\mathit{D}}_{1}D1​ even isotope state recorded with optical pumping of 135Ba^{135}\mathrm{Ba}135Ba and 137Ba^{137}\mathrm{Ba}137Ba to the metastable levels are essentially devoid of forbidden features associated with the hyperfine interaction in the odd isotopes.
A simple theory describing selective excitation of a three-level atom with a tuneable laser is developed. Effects of number density, line widths and laser parameters on the final populations of the levels with laser excitation are discussed. An experiment is described in which a tuneable dye laser is used to pump large numbers of barium atoms into the 6s5d 3 D metastable term from the (bs) 2 1 S 0 ground state via the 6s6p 3 P term. The theory for the interaction of the laser with this 'three-level system' predicts that approximately 80% of the barium atoms should be excited into the 3 D term. Experimentally the largest amount of excitation to the 3 D term observed was (78+or-5)%.
Separation of Li isotopes by laser deflection of atomic beams has been carried out. An atomic beam apparatus with a collimating ratio of 450/1 generates are Li atomic beam of 10/sup 9/ atoms/cm/sup 3/ at the oven temperature of 600 /sup 0/C. The CW tunable dye laser crossing the atomic beam at a right angle has a linewidth of 6 MHz and its intensity as the I-cm interaction area is about 70 mW/cm/sup 2/. When the laser frequency is tuned to coincide with /sup 7/Li2/sup 2/P/sub 3/2/F = 3-2/sup 2/S/sub 1/2/ F = 2 transition, /sup 7/Li atoms are deflected from the beam. The deflected atoms are very pure /sup 7/Li and almost do not contain /sup 8/Li. When the laser frequency coincides with any other transition of 2/sup 2/P-2/sup 5/S of both /sup 5/Li and /sup 7/Li, no apparent deflection is observed because of the optical pumping of the hyperfine levels of the 2/sup 2/S/sub 1/2/ ground state.
We describe a novel method to enrich isotopes and isomers via magnetic deflection of optically polarized atomic beam. High electronic polarization with opposite signs for atoms of both isotopes respectively is achieved by selective optical pumping using lasers with different frequencies and polarizations and then the isotopes are enriched by deflecting the oppositely polarized isotopes along different directions by the inhomo-geneous magnetic field in the spin selective magnet. Separation selectivity and throughput are evaluated and the advantages, disadvantages and prospects of possible application of the present method are discussed in comparison with other existing methods. Experimental scheme with lithium or potassium is suggested.
We propose a general and scalable approach to isotope separation. The method is based on an irreversible change of the mass-to-magnetic moment ratio of a particular isotope in an atomic beam, followed by a magnetic multipole whose gradients deflect and guide the atoms. The underlying mechanism is a reduction of the entropy of the beam by the information of a single scattered photon for each atom that is separated. We numerically simulate isotope separation for a range of examples, which demonstrate this technique's general applicability to almost the entire periodic table. The practical importance of the proposed method is that large-scale isotope separation should be possible, using ordinary inexpensive magnets and the existing technologies of supersonic beams and lasers.