We have produced highly spin-polarized atomic hydrogen by spin-exchange optical pumping. A tunable ring dye laser is used to polarize rubidium atoms by optical pumping. The cell containing the rubidium vapor is coated with paraffin in order to reduce spin relaxation due to wall collisions. Hydrogen gas is dissociated in an inductive discharge and flows continuously through the cell, in which the hydrogen atoms are polarized by spin-exchange collisions with the polarized rubidium atoms. Atomic-hydrogen polarization as high as 2〈
Jz〉H=0.72(6) has been observed, which is the highest polarization yet produced by this method. However, the rubidium polarization may be limited to this value due to radiation trapping at higher rubidium densities. The spin-relaxation rate of atomic hydrogen on a paraffin-coated cell is also measured and corresponds to about 7600 wall bounces between wall relaxation.
A beam source of atomic hydrogen is described which produces metastable atoms in the 2S1/2 state by optical pumping. A beam flux of 1016 atoms/s is generated in the ground state. The atoms in the beam pass in front of a lamp producing Lyman-β (1026 Å) radiation, where some of them are excited to the 3P level and cascade with a branching ratio of 12% to the 2S1/2 state. The number of metastable atoms produced is measured by quenching them with an electric field and detecting the emitted Lyman-α (1216 Å) radiation. Beams of 106 metastable atoms/s were obtained. Using the Bethe-Lamb theory for the quenching process, a metastable beam effective temperature of 100 K was measured.