Light-induced polarization effects in atoms with partially resolved hyperfine structure and applications to absorption, fluorescence, and nonlinear magneto-optical rotation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how light-induced polarization effects in atoms with partially resolved hyperfine structures influence absorption, fluorescence, and nonlinear magneto-optical rotation, providing theoretical insights and formulas for experimental conditions.

Contribution

It offers a theoretical analysis of polarization creation and detection in atoms with hyperfine structures, including analytic formulas for magneto-optical rotation signals.

Findings

Dependence of polarization effects on hyperfine splitting size

Analytic formulas for nonlinear magneto-optical rotation signals

Insights into optical pumping mechanisms in alkali atoms

Abstract

The creation and detection of atomic polarization is examined theoretically, through the study of basic optical-pumping mechanisms and absorption and fluorescence measurements, and the dependence of these processes on the size of ground- and excited-state hyperfine splittings is determined. The consequences of this dependence are studied in more detail for the case of nonlinear magneto-optical rotation in the Faraday geometry (an effect requiring the creation and detection of rank-two polarization in the ground state) with alkali atoms. Analytic formulas for the optical rotation signal under various experimental conditions are presented.