Steady state of atoms in a monochromatic elliptically polarized light field

Abstract

An analytical and invariant expression is given for the steady-state density matrix of free atoms in a monochromatic radiation field with arbitrary intensity and arbitrary elliptical polarization. The field drives the closed transition F → F + 1, with arbitrary values of F . This is the only class of transitions where a closed analytical expression for the steady state was lacking. Some applications of this result are indicated.

Amplification of radiation in atomic vapor induced by a linearly polarized laser radiation

“…The problem of steady state population redistribution among magnetic sublevels of fine or hyperfine V-type systems induced by intense linearly, circularly, or elliptically polarized excitation has been addressed starting from the 80-s in several theoretical papers [2][3][4][5]. These calculations show that the redistribution of populations of magnetic sublevels caused by sufficiently long action of an intense linearly-polarized laser radiation on atomic medium with V-type system of magnetic sublevels (transition from ground the state F = F to the excited state F = F + 1), after multiple cycles of absorption and spontaneous emission among different magnetic sublevels ("Zeeman pumping") leads to redistribution of population towards magnetic sublevels with small | F | values and tends to equalize the populations of particular ground and excited-state sublevels linked by linearly-polarized radiation.…”

Nonlinear magneto-optical rotation of elliptically polarized light

“…It has been shown that the dark state exists even for atoms with complicated Zeeman substructure interacting with elliptically polarized light [51,52,53,54,55,56]. Here we recall the analytical expressions for this dark state and the corresponding eigenvalues.…”

Special features of the dynamics of multipole moments of atoms at rest in weak light fields

“…It should be noted that in principle, the stationary distribution of ′ µµ ρ (and hence ˆκ ρ ) for arbitrary S and g j , found in [1, [6][7][8][9], allows the light-induced forces acting on the atom and the susceptibility tensor of the medium to be determined. In this regard, we emphasize that investigations into the characteristic times entering into Eq.…”