Increasing the pump-up rate to polarize 3He gas using spin-exchange optical pumping method

Abstract

In recent years, polarized 3 He gas has increasingly been used as neutron polarizers and polarization analyzers. Two of the leading methods to polarize the 3 He gas are the spin-exchange optical pumping (SEOP) method and the meta-stable exchange optical pumping (MEOP) method. At present, the SEOP setup is comparatively compact due to the fact that it does not require the sophisticated compressor system used in the MEOP method. The temperature and the laser power available determine the speed, at which the SEOP method polarizes the 3 He gas. For the quantity of gas typically used in neutron scattering work, this speed is independent of the quantity of the gas required, whereas the polarizing time using the MEOP method is proportional to the quantity of gas required. Currently, using the SEOP method to polarize several bar-liters of 3 He to 70% polarization would require 20−40 h. This is an order of magnitude longer than the MEOP method for the same quantity of gas and polarization. It would therefore be advantageous to speed up the SEOP process. In this article, we analyze the requirements for temperature, laser power, and the type of alkali used in order to shorten the time required to polarize 3 He gas using the SEOP method.