Preparation and Determination of Spin-Polarized States in Multi-Zeeman-sublevel Atoms

Abstract

We demonstrate a simple technique to prepare and determine the desired internal quantum states in multi-Zeeman-sublevel atoms. By choosing appropriate coupling and pumping laser beams, atoms can be easily prepared in a desired Zeeman sublevel with high purity or in any chosen ground-state population distributions. The population distributions or state purities of such prepared atomic states can be determined by using a weak, circularly-polarized probe beam due to differences in transition strengths among different Zeeman sublevels. Preparing well-defined internal quantum states in multi-Zeeman-sublevel atoms (or spin-polarized quantum-state engineering) will be very important in demonstrating many interesting effects in quantum information processing with multi-level atomic systems.

17pages, 4figures, Submit to Physical Review Letters

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• Measurement of conditional phase shifts for quantum logic
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• Entanglement of remote atomic qubits
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• Electromagnetically induced transparency resonances inverted in magnetic field
• Magneto-optical spectroscopy with polarization-modulated light
• Precision measurement of the nuclear polarization in laser-cooled, optically pumped ${}^{37}\mathrm{K}$
• A quantum register using collective excitations in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Optimizing Population Accumulation in Quantum States Using Microwave Spectroscopy
• Probing the non-Planckian spectrum of thermal radiation in a micron-sized cavity with a spin-polarized atomic beam
• All-optical reconstruction of atomic ground-state population