Atomic beam preparation for hydrogen maser operation with unpolarized atoms

Abstract

The conventional atomic beam preparation technique for hydrogen maser operation consists of a six pole magnetic field focussing in combination with adiabatically changing magnetic fields in the transition region between focusser and maser cavity, which results in a state selected, polarized ensemble of hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen maser operation with state selected, but unpolarized atoms has the advantage to reduce considerably the sensitivity of hydrogen maser frequency on coherently excited, low frequency,ΔmF=±1 Zeeman transitions. The influence of the magnetic field pattern in the transition region on the energy level population probabilities for the focussed hydrogen beam has been analysed. Atomic beam preparation techniques using non-adiabatically changing magnetic field configurations in the transition region are described. The dependence of hydrogen maser oscillation on the energy level population within the atomic beam is theoretically investigated and the results are used for the analysis of the experimentally achieved atomic beam populations. It has been shown that a pulsed magnetic spin guidance field in the transition region, which switches between adiabatically changing magnetic field configurations and a sudden magnetic field reversal, results in an ensemble of hydrogen atoms with vanishing time averaged polarization, which does not deteriorate the conventionally achieved maser oscillation amplitude.