0000000000882522

AUTHOR

Mikhail Balabas

Characterization of high-temperature performance of cesium vapor cells with anti-relaxation coating

© 2017 Author(s). Vapor cells with antirelaxation coating are widely used in modern atomic physics experiments due to the coating's ability to maintain the atoms' spin polarization during wall collisions. We characterize the performance of vapor cells with different coating materials by measuring longitudinal spin relaxation and vapor density at temperatures up to 95 °C. We infer that the spin-projection-noise-limited sensitivity for atomic magnetometers with such cells improves with temperature, which demonstrates the potential of antirelaxation coated cells in applications of future high-sensitivity magnetometers.

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Investigation of antirelaxation wall coatings beyond melting temperatures

We investigate vapor cells with antirelaxation wall coatings by measuring their relaxation properties beyond the melting temperatures and compare with the melting behavior of the coating material as observed with differential scanning calorimetry.

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Is light narrowing possible with dense-vapor paraffin coated cells for atomic magnetometers?

We investigated the operation of an all-optical rubidium-87 atomic magnetometer with amplitude-modulated light. To study the suppression of spin-exchange relaxation, three schemes of pumping were implemented with room-temperature and heated paraffin coated vacuum cells. Efficient pumping and accumulation of atoms in the F=2 ground state were obtained. However, the sought-for narrowing of the resonance lines has not been achieved. A theoretical analysis of the polarization degree is presented to illustrate the absence of light narrowing due to radiation trapping at high temperature.

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Raman and nuclear magnetic resonance investigation of alkali metal vapor interaction with alkene-based anti-relaxation coating.

The use of anti-relaxation coatings in alkali vapor cells yields substantial performance improvements by reducing the probability of spin relaxation in wall collisions by several orders of magnitude. Some of the most effective anti-relaxation coating materials are alpha-olefins, which (as in the case of more traditional paraffin coatings) must undergo a curing period after cell manufacturing in order to achieve the desired behavior. Until now, however, it has been unclear what physicochemical processes occur during cell curing, and how they may affect relevant cell properties. We present the results of nondestructive Raman-spectroscopy and magnetic-resonance investigations of the influence …

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