Magneto-optical resonances at the D2 line of Rb in a hot Cs buffer gas confined in a micrometric thickness optical cell
Христина Андреева, Emilia A. Alipieva, Санка Гатева, Elena T. Taskova, Аспарух Марковски, Николай Петров, Petko Todorov, Стоян Цветков, Zara Kasapeteva
Abstract
Ground-state level-crossing magneto-optical resonances are registered at the D2 line of 85Rb atoms as a small admixture in a 700 μm thick cell filled with Cs atoms. The signals of the Rb atoms in a “buffer gas” of hot Cs atoms are compared with the signals from atoms without hot “buffer gas” (the thermal Cs atoms in the 700 μm cell and a nanometric cell). Our results show that the Rb particles show an intermediate behavior between these two cases under such conditions. This is explained based on adequate confinement size determined by the polarization relaxation of the Rb atoms by spinexchange collisions with the high-density Cs atoms. The possibility of realizing such temperature-controlled variation of the effective confinement size can be of interest for investigating collisions between different alkali atoms and the formation of dimers under the conditions of one-dimensional confinement.