Rovibrational optical pumping of a molecular beam

Optical pumping of a lithium atomic beam for atom interferometry

8 N ov 2 01 2 Rovibrational cooling of molecules by optical pumping

We demonstrate rotational and vibrational cooling of cesium dimers by optical pumping techniques. We use two laser sources exciting all the populated rovibrational states, except a target state that thus behaves like a dark state where molecules pile up thanks to absorption-spontaneous emission cycles. We are able to accumulate photoassociated cold Cs2 molecules in their absolute ground state (...

Observation of optical pumping effects in collinear atomic beam - laser beam(s) interaction

2014 The detection of optical resonances by observation of the fluorescence light emitted from a fast atomic beam of Na interacting with a collinear laser beam is limited in sensitivity by optical pumping processes. In the experiment reported here, we take advantage of the optical pumping by using a second collinear laser beam, achieving then a gain in fluorescence signal. The effects of the la...

Optical Pumping

T he rather odd term optical pumping means just what it says. In general “pumping” is a process of raising matter from lower to higher energy; for example, raising the potential energy of water hy moving it from an underground well to an elevated tank. In this article we shall he concerned w i t h the pumping of individual atoms from lower to higher states of internal energy. The word optical r...

Optical Pumping

Optical pumping uses light to affect the internal degrees of freedom of a sample of atoms in a vapor. These internal degrees of freedom are angular momentum states of the atomic ground state, which are populated when light is absorbed and emitted. This experiment reveals many phenomena of quantum mechanics including angular momentum selection rules, the density matrix, and resonance. Optical pu...