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AIP conference proceedings

A spin flipper for thermal atomic beams

G. Baum, W. Schröder

Published Jan 1, 1982• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The spin flipper presented here is based on the method of diabatic passage. It allows for a rapid reversal of electronic as well as nuclear polarization of a thermal atomic beam without affecting beam intensity, beam profile, or magnetic fields in the interaction region. The flipper will be useful in spin dependent measurements where instrumental asymmetries and systematic errors have to be kept small. The spin flipper was tested with a polarized lithium beam in an atomic physics experiment and the reversal efficiency was found to by 0.98. The flipper can easily be adapted for other spin‐polarizable atoms, e.g. for a polarized atomic hydrogen beam target.

DOI
10.1063/1.33814

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The spin flipper presented here is based on the method of diabatic passage. It allows for a rapid reversal of electronic as well as nuclear polarization of a thermal atomic beam without affecting beam intensity, beam profile, or magnetic fields in the interaction region. The flipper will be useful in spin dependent measurements where instrumental asymmetries and systematic errors have to be kept small. The spin flipper was tested with a polarized lithium beam in an atomic physics experiment and the reversal efficiency was found to by 0.98. The flipper can easily be adapted for other spin‐polarizable atoms, e.g. for a polarized atomic hydrogen beam target.
By using the method of diabatic passage, the authors have developed a spin flipper which allows a rapid and convenient reversal of the atomic spins. The spin flipper was tested with a polarised lithium atomic beam by analysing the atomic beam polarisation with the help of a second spin-flip region and a sextupole magnet. The reversal efficiency was measured to be 0.98 which is in agreement with the calculation. The flipper is especially useful in low-energy electron-atom crossed-beam collision studies. The experimental arrangement used also allows a precise determination of the atomic beam polarisation.
Polarized atomic beam sources have been in operation for many years to produce either nuclear polarized atomic hydrogen or deuterium beams. In recent experiments, such a source was used to polarize both isotopes independently at the same time. By recombination of the atoms, hydrogen-deuterium molecules with all possible nuclear spin combinations can be created. Those spin isomers are useful for further applications, like precision spectroscopy, as polarized targets for laser-particle acceleration, polarized fuel for fusion reactors, or as an option for future measurements of electric dipole moments.
The observation of the 4π symmetry of spinor wave functions was one of the first and highly debated neutron interference experiments. Polarized neutrons have been used to verify the spin-superposition principle on a macroscopic level when the spin in one beam path is inverted with respect to the other one. This results in a spin polarization perpendicular to both initial spins. When a Rabi flipper is used the final spin polarization rotates in this perpendicular plane with the Larmor frequency of the flipper field. Thus, it produces a “frozen” Larmor spin rotation in free space. In this case the spin-flip is associated with an energy (photon) transfer which causes this effect. A magnetic Josephson effect-like situation exists when spin-flippers with slightly different resonance frequencies are used in both beam paths. When such a spin reversal is done in both beam paths a magnetic Josephson effect analog has been realized which shows a remarkably high energy resolution. Multiphoton exchange can be achieved when off-resonance fields are used.
In the past, the Stern–Gerlach experiment has been used as a standard method for analyzing the population of magnetic substates contained in spin-polarized and/or state-selected atomic/molecular beams. However, this experiment is quite demanding due to its low signal intensity and difficulty in beam alignment. The present study shows that the use of a hexapole magnet and a spin flipper, together with the time-of-flight analysis, allows us to conduct an almost equivalent analysis while greatly improving the signal intensity. Applications to the analysis of spin-polarized triplet excited helium and state-selected O2( 3 Σg−) beams are presented.