Magnetoelectric Jones spectroscopy of alkali atoms

Abstract

The Jones effect in a medium of free atoms exposed to static electric and magnetic fields is a useful tool for determining details of an atomic structure. For atoms in their nS ground states irradiated by a monochromatic wave in resonance with a single-photon transition to an n′ D state, the bilinear Jones effect is not shaded by the quadratic Kerr and Cotton–Mouton effects, nor by the linear in magnetic field Faraday effect. The position and shape of the amplitude resonance may provide information on spectroscopic properties of atomic levels. We generalize equations for the Jones-effect amplitude to the case of a doublet structure of energy levels and calculate corresponding parameters for alkali atoms. General equations are derived for the amplitude dependence on the relative orientation of the static electric and magnetic fields and on the angle between the static field and the major axis of the wave polarization vector. These equations demonstrate explicitly that the three bilinear-in-static-fields optical birefringence effects—(i) the Jones birefringence (in parallel fields), (ii) the linear birefringence and (iii) the directional birefringence (the last two in perpendicular fields)—correspond to particular cases of the bilinear-in-static-fields correction to the amplitude of Rayleigh forward scattering.