Orientation-to-alignment conversion and spin squeezing

Abstract

The relationship between orientation-to-alignment conversion (a form of atomic polarization evolution induced by an electric field) and the phenomenon of spin squeezing is demonstrated. A "stretched" state of an atom or molecule with maximum angular-momentum projection along the quantization axis possesses orientation and is a quantum-mechanical minimum-uncertainty state, where the product of the equal uncertainties of the angular-momentum projections on two orthogonal directions transverse to the quantization axis is the minimum allowed by the uncertainty relation. Application of an electric field for a short time induces orientation-to-alignment conversion and produces a spin-squeezed state, in which the quantum state essentially remains a minimum-uncertainty state, but the uncertainties of the angular-momentum projections on the orthogonal directions are unequal. This property can be visualized using the angular-momentum probability surfaces, where the radius of the surface is given by the probability of measuring the maximum angular-momentum projection in that direction. Brief remarks are also given concerning collective-spin squeezing and quantum nondemolition measurements.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Quantum spin squeezing
• Conditional Spin-Squeezing of a Large Ensemble via the Vacuum Rabi Splitting
• Spin squeezing of atomic ensembles via nuclear-electronic spin entanglement
• Spin squeezing of a cold atomic ensemble with the nuclear spin of one-half
• Quantum Control of the Hyperfine Spin of a Cs Atom Ensemble
• Stroboscopic back-action evasion in a dense alkali-metal vapor
• Electric Field Induced Symmetry Breaking of Angular Momentum Distribution in Atoms

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• How to build a magnetometer with thermal atomic vapor: A tutorial
• Spin squeezing in an ensemble of quadrupolar nuclei NMR system
• Vector Magnetometry Exploiting Phase-Geometry Effects in a Double-Resonance Alignment Magnetometer
• Enhanced squeezing of a collective spin via control of its qudit subsystems
• Excess optical quantum noise in atomic sensors
• Improving Sensitivity of an Amplitude-Modulated Magneto-Optical Atomic Magnetometer using Squeezed Light
• Efficient polarization of high-angular-momentum systems
• Generation of atomic spin orientation with a linearly polarised beam in room-temperature alkali-metal vapour
• Anomalous suppression of spin-exchange relaxation in alignment signals in cesium in ultra-weak magnetic fields
• Linear dichroism signals due to the alignment in the ground state of hydrogen-like atoms and their inversion in a single-beam optical pumping scheme
• Spin squeezing an ultracold molecule
• Isolating Pure Quadratic Zeeman Splitting