気体原子の光ポンピング

抄録

Optical pumping of gaseous atoms in the ground states and in the excited states is reviewed. We present at first important phenomena observed in optical pumping experiments with a circularly or linearly polarized light, classifying the various perturbations on the Zeeman substates, such as perturbations of resonant or nonresonant light, static magnetic field, radio-frequency fields and atomic collisions. Recent studies on the applications to the frequency standard and to the measurements of extremely weak magnetic fields are also shown. We present finally on optical pumping with lasers, which has been extensively studied in recent years.