Department of Physics and Astronomy: Individual Faculty Pages
Timothy J. Gay Publications
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Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2012
Citation
PHYSICAL REVIEW A 86, 053416 (2012)
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.86.053416
Abstract
We have developed a simple heuristic method for determining the polarization of an optically pumped alkalimetal vapor. A linearly polarized probe beam traverses a vapor cell perpendicular to the pump-beam propagation direction, and the transmitted beam intensity is monitored for orthogonal linear polarizations. As the probe beam is scanned in frequency across the D1 transition, its linear-polarization-dependent transmission can be used as a measure of the atomic orientation of the vapor. We analyze these transmission differences and their dependence on the alkali-metal number density in the vapor.
Comments
©2012 American Physical Society. Used by permission.