Diffusive Transfer of Polarized 3He Gas through Depolarizing Magnetic Gradients
Abstract
Transfer of polarized 3He gas across spatially varying magnetic fields will facilitate a new source of polarized 3He ions for particle accelerators. In this context, depolarization of atoms as they pass through regions of significant transverse field gradients is a major concern. To understand these depolarization effects, we have built a system consisting of a Helmholtz coil pair and a solenoid, both with central magnetic fields of order 30 gauss. The atoms are polarized via metastability exchange optical pumping in the Helmholtz coil and are in diffusive contact via a glass tube with a second test cell in the solenoid. We have carried out measurements of the spin relaxation during transfer of polarization in 3He at 1 torr by diffusion. We explore the use of measurements of the loss of polarization taken in one cell to infer the polarization in the other cell.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.1412.6167,
title = {Diffusive Transfer of Polarized 3He Gas through Depolarizing Magnetic Gradients},
author = {James D. Maxwell and Charles S. Epstein and Richard G. Milner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.6167},
year = {2015}
}