Optical pumping of a laser rod (bottom) with an arc lamp (top). Red: hot. Blue: cold. Green: light. Non-green arrows: water flow. Solid colors: metal. Light colors: fused quartz.[1]
Method of population inversion
Optical pumping is a process in which light is used to raise (or "pump") electrons from a lower energy level in an atom or molecule to a higher one. It is commonly used in laser construction to pump the active laser medium so as to achieve population inversion. The technique was developed by the 1966 Nobel Prize winner Alfred Kastler in the early 1950s.[2]
Optical pumping is also used to cyclically pump electrons bound within an atom or molecule to a well-defined quantum state. For the simplest case of coherent two-level optical pumping of an atomic species containing a single outer-shell electron, this means that the electron is coherently pumped to a single hyperfine sublevel (labeled ), which is defined by the polarization of the pump laser along with the quantum selection rules. Upon optical pumping, the atom is said to be oriented in a specific sublevel, however, due to the cyclic nature of optical pumping, the bound electron will actually be undergoing repeated excitation and decay between the upper and lower state sublevels. The frequency and polarization of the pump laser determine the sublevel in which the atom is oriented.
In practice, completely coherent optical pumping may not occur due to power-broadening of the linewidth of a transition and undesirable effects such as hyperfine structure trapping and radiation trapping. Therefore the orientation of the atom depends more generally on the frequency, intensity, polarization, and spectral bandwidth of the laser as well as the linewidth and transition probability of the absorbing transition.[3]
An optical pumping experiment is commonly found in physics undergraduate laboratories, using rubidium gas isotopes and displaying the ability of radiofrequency (MHz) electromagnetic radiation to effectively pump and unpump these isotopes.
^Taylor, Nick (2000). LASER: The inventor, the Nobel laureate, and the thirty-year patent war. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-83515-0. Page 56.
^Demtroder, W. (1998). Laser Spectroscopy: Basic Concepts and Instrumentation. Berlin: Springer.
Opticalpumping is a process in which light is used to raise (or "pump") electrons from a lower energy level in an atom or molecule to a higher one. It...
suggested opticalpumping of a multi-level system as a method for obtaining the population inversion, later a main method of laser pumping. Townes reports...
kinetic energy as they move to a potential maximum, at which point opticalpumping moves them back to a lower energy state, thus lowering the total energy...
can act as a laser or an optical amplifier. The pump power must be higher than the lasing threshold of the laser. The pump energy is usually provided...
physicist, and Nobel Prize laureate. He is known for the development of opticalpumping. Kastler was born in Guebwiller (Alsace, German Empire) and later attended...
gain/amplification medium) is a synthetic ruby rod that is energized through opticalpumping, typically by a xenon flashtube. Ruby has very broad and powerful absorption...
"we're interested in the mechanisms that limit the performance of opticalpumping systems, such as atomic clocks, magnetometers, and laser guide-star...
Look up pumping in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Pumping may refer to: The operation of a pump, for moving a liquid from one location to another The...
the signal (co-directional pumping), in the opposite direction (contra-directional pumping) or both. Contra-directional pumping is more common as the transfer...
"Swarm Absolute Scalar and Vector Magnetometer Based on Helium 4 OpticalPumping". Procedia Chemistry. Proceedings of the Eurosensors XXIII conference...
the pumping transition is greater than that of the laser transition. This means that, if the laser is opticallypumped, the frequency of the pumping light...
demonstrated in diluted mixtures. The process of opticalpumping uses rubidium (Rb) contained in a glass optical cell. This cell is placed in an oven with two...
Fabry–Pérot optical resonators, as well as opticalpumping, pumping by collisions in a gas discharge (as in helium–neon lasers), optical amplifiers, Q-switching...
Another method of powering some diode lasers is the use of opticalpumping. Opticallypumped semiconductor lasers (OPSL) use a III-V semiconductor chip...
Jack Parry. In 1949, Kastler and Brossel developed a technique called opticalpumping for electron energy level transitions in atoms using light. This technique...
devices include optical data recording, fiber optic telecommunications, laser printing (based on xerography), displays, and opticalpumping of high-power...
based on laser polarization gradients and work at low laser power when the optical-pumping time between different ground-state sublevels becomes long....
An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage...
245410. S2CID 51933139. "Valley polarization in MoS2 monolayers by opticalpumping". Hualing Zeng, Junfeng Dai, Wang Yao, Di Xiao and Xiaodong Cui. Nature...
diode lasers to polarize and monitor spin precession. Circularly polarized pumping light tuned to the D 1 {\displaystyle D_{1}} spectral resonance line polarizes...
shapes for the construction of optical components such as calibration targets, integrating spheres, and opticalpump cavities for lasers. Spectralon's...
optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) is a double resonance technique by which the electron spin state of a crystal defect may be optically pumped...
hyperpolarized through interactions with an opticallypumped caesium vapor in a process known as spin-exchange opticalpumping (SEOP). SEOP can increase the nuclear...
Chu's group likewise modeled sub-Doppler cooling as fundamentally an opticalpumping scheme. As a result of their efforts, Phillips, Cohen-Tannoudji, and...
modes. It should provide sufficient cladding to confine the core and opticalpump section over a relatively short piece of the fiber. Tapered double-clad...
such as: chemical reactions (leading to chemical-induced DNP, CIDNP), opticalpumping and spin injection. DNP is considered one of several techniques for...
Alfred Kastler (Nobel Prize for Physics 1966) proposed the method of opticalpumping, experimentally confirmed, two years later, by Brossel, Kastler, and...
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