Enhanced coupling of electron and nuclear spins by quantum tunneling resonances

Abstract

Noble-gas spins feature hours long coherence times owing to their great isolation from the environment, and find practical usage in various applications. However, this isolation leads to extremely slow preparation times, relying on weak spin transfer from an electron-spin ensemble. Here we propose a controllable mechanism to enhance this transfer rate. We analyze the spin dynamics of helium-3 atoms with hot, optically-excited potassium atoms and reveal the formation of quasi-bound states in resonant binary collisions. We find a resonant enhancement of the spin-exchange cross section by up to six orders of magnitude and two orders of magnitude enhancement for the thermally averaged, polarization rate-coefficient. We further examine the effect for various other noble gases and find that the enhancement is universal. We outline feasible conditions under which the enhancement may be experimentally observed and practically utilized.

8 pages, 4 figures in the main text, appended to the end are 12 pages, 4 figures of supplementary information

References in corpus (11)

• Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases
• Observation of Quantum Effects in sub Kelvin Cold Reactions
• ${}^3$He-${}^{129}$Xe Comagnetometery using ${}^{87}$Rb Detection and Decoupling
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• Accurate ab initio spin densities
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• Gravitational wave detection beyond the standard quantum limit using a negative-mass spin system and virtual rigidity
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Isotope study of the nonlinear pressure shifts of ${}^{85}$Rb and ${}^{87}$Rb hyperfine resonances in Ar, Kr, and Xe buffer gases
• Optical protection of alkali-metal atoms from spin relaxation