2006/11/01 by S. J. Seltzer, Scott J. Seltzer, P. J. Meares +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.75.051407
4 pages
arxiv created 2006/11/01 · openalex publication_date 2007/05/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We observe quantum beats with periodic revivals due to nonlinear spacing of Zeeman levels in the ground state of potassium atoms, and demonstrate their synchronous optical pumping by double modulation of the pumping light at the Larmor frequency and the revival frequency. We show that synchronous pumping increases the degree of spin polarization by a factor of 4. As a practical example, we explore the application of this double-modulation technique to atomic magnetometers operating in the geomagnetic field range, and find that it can increase the sensitivity and reduce magnetic-field-orientation-dependent measurement errors endemic to alkali-metal magnetometers.