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High quality anti-relaxation coating material for alkali atom vapor cells

M. V. Balabas, Kasper Jensen, Wojciech Wasilewski, Hanna Krauter, Lars S. Madsen, Jörg Helge Müller, T. Fernholz, Eugene Simon Polzik

Published Mar 15, 2010• 46 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We present an experimental investigation of alkali atom vapor cells coated with a high quality anti-relaxation coating material based on alkenes. The prepared cells with single compound alkene based coating showed the longest spin relaxation times which have been measured up to now with room temperature vapor cells. Suggestions are made that chemical binding of a cesium atom and an alkene molecule by attack to the C=C bond plays a crucial role in such improvement of anti-relaxation coating quality.

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arXiv:1005.1617•Physical Review Letters•Aug 12, 2010•274 citations
We present an experimental investigation of alkali atom vapor cells coated with a high quality anti-relaxation coating material based on alkenes. The prepared cells with single compound alkene based coating showed the longest spin relaxation times which have been measured up to now with room temperature vapor cells. Suggestions are made that chemical binding of a cesium atom and an alkene molecule by attack to the C=C bond plays a crucial role in such improvement of anti-relaxation coating quality.
We present an experimental investigation of alkali atom vapor cells coated with a high quality anti-relaxation coating material based on alkenes. The prepared cells with single compound alkene based coating showed the longest spin relaxation times which have been measured up to now with room temperature vapor cells. Suggestions are made that chemical binding of a cesium atom and an alkene molecule by attack to the C = C bond plays a crucial role in such improvement of anti-relaxation coating quality.
Vapor cells with antirelaxation coating are widely used in modern atomic physics experiments due to the coating's ability to maintain the atoms' spin polarization during wall collisions. We characterize the performance of vapor cells with different coating materials by measuring longitudinal spin relaxation and vapor density at temperatures up to 95 °C. We infer that the spin-projection-noise-limited sensitivity for atomic magnetometers with such cells improves with temperature, which demonstrates the potential of antirelaxation coated cells in applications of future high-sensitivity magnetometers.
Atomic vapor-cell quantum memories are key devices for quantum information science. Anti-relaxation coatings on the inner surface of the cell suppress ground-state dephasing caused by atom-wall collisions, thereby improving memory performance. Nevertheless, systematic performance comparisons of vapor-cell quantum memories with different anti-relaxation coatings under identical conditions remain limited. Here, we experimentally compare quantum-memory performance in cesium vapor cells with and without anti-relaxation coatings-uncoated, paraffin-coated, and alkene-coated-under otherwise identical conditions to assess coating-dependent effects. Using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) as the light storage protocol, we characterize transmission, memory efficiency, and storage lifetime. The alkene-coated cell yields the largest enhancement in retrieval efficiency-more than fourfold relative to the uncoated cell and more than twofold relative to the paraffin-coated cell-while exhibiting a modest (approximately 16%) increase in storage lifetime. These results provide a systematic benchmark for evaluating anti-relaxation coatings and for this instance, identify alkene coatings as an effective choice for improving retrieval efficiency in warm-vapor-cell memories.