Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 263
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40259-2

Regular Article

Optical pumping of a lithium atomic beam for atom interferometry

Laboratoire Collisions Agrégats Réactivité-IRSAMC Université de Toulouse-UPS and CNRS UMR 5589, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex, France

^a e-mail: gauguet@irsamc.ups-tlse.fr

Received: 23 April 2013
Received in final form: 20 September 2013
Published online: 12 December 2013

Abstract

We apply optical pumping to prepare the lithium beam of our atom interferometer in a single hyperfine-Zeeman sublevel: we use two components of the D1-line for pumping the ⁷Li atoms in a dark state F, m_F =  +2 (or −2) sublevel. The optical pumping efficiency has been characterized by two techniques: state-selective laser atom deflection or magnetic dephasing of the atom interferometer signals. The first technique has not achieved a high sensitivity, because of a limited signal to noise ratio, but magnetic dephasing signals have shown that about 95% of the population has been transferred in the aimed sublevel, with similar results for three mean velocities of the atomic beam covering the range 744–1520 m/s.