Laser preparation of polarized nuclei: Absorption of one polarized photon is enough and no high spectral resolution is needed to achieve 100% polarization

摘要

A new method to prepare photoions with the polarized nuclear spin is proposed. Selected total electron momentum state |J,mJ is excited by short (pico- or (sub)nanosecond) spectrally broad laser pulse which does not resolve a hyperfine structure thus preparing a superposition of all sublevels of the total angular momentum F of an atom. Initially unpolarized nuclear spin state becomes highly polarized in a course of subsequent free quantum evolution, and at appropriate time an atom is ionized by another short laser pulse. For the case of nuclear spin I=1/2, absorption of only one polarized photon is needed to achieve 100% nuclear polarization.