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Spin-exchange collisions and their consequences for spin-polarized gas targets of hydrogen and deuterium

1993; Elsevier BV; Volume: 334; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0168-9002(93)90791-f

1872-9576

Thad Walker, L. W. Anderson,

Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates

The effects of spin-exchange collisions on the polarization of dense spin-polarized samples of hydrogen and deuterium are analyzed. It is shown that even in large magnetic fields spin-exchange collisions transfer angular momentum between the electrons and the nuclei. This effect has important implications for the operation of densed spin-polarized targets and sources of hydrogen and deuterium. For tensor polarized targets care will be required to obtain a high tensor polarization, especially at low fields. For the specific case of sources that are spin-polarized by spin-exchange collisions with optically pumped alkali atoms, spin-exchange not only polarizes the hydrogen and deuterium electron spins, but polarizes the nuclear spins as well. For high-density vector-polarized targets this may eliminate the need for rf transitions to polarize the nuclei.