Precision laser spectropolarimetry

Violations of fundamental symmetries in atoms and tests of unification theories of elementary particles

“…Now atomic PNC has been measured in bismuth, lead, thallium, and cesium. PNC effects were measured by optical rotation in the following atoms and transitions: in 209 Bi in the transition 6s 2 6p 3 4 S 3/2 − 6s 2 6p 3 2 D 5/2 by the Novosibirsk [3], Moscow [27], and Oxford [28,29] [45,46]. In the most precise Tl Stark-PNC experiment [46] an accuracy of 20% was reached.…”

In situ measurement of light polarization with ellipticity-induced nonlinear magneto-optical rotation

“…Shot-noise-limited polarimetry is routinely achieved in experiments using modulated light [16,21,30,31], and in our case our polarimeter is a factor of ≈ 3 above the shot-noise limit [16,50]. This can be compared to the best existing measurement of ellipticity, that described in Ref.…”

“…As noted in Refs. [18,20], although there are well-developed techniques for highly sensitive measurements of small polarization changes [21,22], these techniques generally do not give absolute measurements of the polarization at similar levels -they are typically limited to accuracies of ∼ 10 −4 rad [21]. Here we present a sensitive, straightforward, in-situ method to measure light ellipticity applicable to a diverse array of atomic physics experiments.…”

Highly sensitive polarimetry

“…For birefringent polarization prisms the typical values of are in the range lO4lO6. Equation (2) can be generalized for the case i…”

“…Note that the sensitivity to induced ellipticity in the highly sensitive polarimetry methods [1][2][3][4] is a few orders lower than the sensitivity to induced polarization rotation. Evidently if we need to measure ellipticity with high sensitivity, we can transform it into the polarization rotation with the aid of a wave plate.…”