Optical pumping of a lithium atomic beam for atom interferometry
Atomic Physics
2015-06-16 v1
Abstract
We apply optical pumping to prepare the lithium beam of our atom interferometer in a single hyperfine-Zeeman sublevel: we use two components of the D1-line for pumping the 7Li atoms in a dark state F,mF=+2 (or -2) sublevel. The optical pumping efficiency has been characterized by two techniques: state-selective laser atom deflection or magnetic dephasing of the atom interferometer signals. The first technique has not achieved a high sensitivity, because of a limited signal to noise ratio, but magnetic dephasing signals have shown that about 95% of the population has been transferred in the aimed sublevel, with similar results for three mean velocities of the atomic beam covering the range 744-1520m/s.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1305.6727,
title = {Optical pumping of a lithium atomic beam for atom interferometry},
author = {Jonathan Gillot and Alexandre Gauguet and Matthias Büchner and Jacques Vigué},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.6727},
year = {2015}
}