Optical pumping via incoherent Raman transitions

An optical pumping scheme is presented that uses incoherent Raman transitions to prepare a trapped cesium atom in a specific Zeeman state within the 6S1/2, F=3 hyperfine manifold. An important advantage of this scheme over existing optical pumping schemes is that the atom can be prepared in any of the F=3 Zeeman states. We describe an experimental implementation of the scheme and show that a fraction 0.57±0.02 of the total population can be prepared in the desired state, with the remaining population distributed fairly uniformly among the six other states. We demonstrate the scheme in the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics, but the technique is equally applicable to a wide variety of atomic systems with hyperfine ground-state structure.