Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 093004 (2002) [4 pages]Magnetic Slowing Down of Spin Relaxation due to Binary Collisions of Alkali-Metal Atoms with Buffer-Gas Atoms |
PRL Celebrates 50 Years
This Week's Milestone Letters are from 1981: |
D. K. Walter, W. M. Griffith, and W. Happer
Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544
Received 18 July 2001; published 15 February 2002
We report the first studies of magnetic decoupling of the spin relaxation of alkali-metal atoms due to binary collisions with buffer gases. When binary collisions are the dominant relaxation mechanism, the relaxation and its magnetic decoupling are well described by the S-damping rate ΓSD due to the spin-rotation interaction γṄS, the spin exchange rate ΓEX for collisions between alkali atoms, and a new “Carver rate” ΓC, due to the pressure-shift interaction δAİS, which can substantially broaden the magnetic decoupling curve while having no influence on the zero-field rates.
©2002 The American Physical Society
URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v88/e093004
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.093004
PACS: 32.80.Bx, 31.70.Hq
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