We have built and operated an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type. The atomic wave is a supersonic beam of lithium seeded in argon and the mirrors and beam-splitters for the atomic wave are based on elastic Bragg diffraction on laser standing waves at λ = 671 nm. We give here a detailed description of our experimental setup and of the procedures used to align its components. We then pr...

By colliding two Bose-Einstein condensates, we have observed strong bosonic stimulation of the elastic scattering process. When a weak input beam was applied as a seed, it was amplified by a factor of 20. This large gain atomic four-wave mixing resulted in the generation of two macroscopically occupied pair-correlated atomic beams.

It is shown that the 1S level hyperfine populations prior to muon capture will be statistical when either target or beam are unpolarised independent of the atomic level at which the hyperfine interaction becomes appreciable. This assertion holds in the absence of magnetic transitions during the cascade and is true because of minimal polarisation after atomic capture and selective feeding during...

We consider optical pumping with a quasi monochromatic tunable light beam, in the low intensity limit where a rate equation regime is obtained The velocity selective optical pumping (V.S.O.P.) introduces a correlation between atomic velocity and internal variables in the ground (or metastable) state. The aim of this article is to evaluate these atomic observables (orientation, alignment, popula...

This contribution describes operation and results of a polarimeter, as it will be used for HER-MES, obtained at an atomic beam test source with test storage cells of mean wall collision numbers up to 3500. The HERMES experiment at the HERA electron storage ring is designed to study the spin structure of the nucleons. It will measure spin dependent deep inelastic scattering from the proton and n...

A series of resonances has been observed in the absorption of a 100% amplitude-modulated laser beam by an optically pumped sodium atomic beam. Resonances were observed when the modulation frequency was equal to the first, second, and third subharmonic of the Rabi frequency. The experimental results are compared with theory, and the implications of these parametric resonances to laser instabilit...