Abstract |
Recently, our group has produced spin-polarized hydrogen (SPH) atoms at densities
of at least 101919 cm-3, from the photodissociation of hydrogen halide molecules with
circularly-polarized UV light, and measured via magnetization quantum beats with
a pickup coil. These densities are about 7 orders of magnitude higher than those
produced using conventional methods, and they open up new fields of application, such
as ultrafast magnetometry, the production of polarized MeV and GeV particle beams,
such as electron beams with intensities about 104 higher than current sources, and
the study of polarized nuclear fusion, for which the reaction cross sections of D-T and
D-3He reactions are expected to increase by 50% for fully polarized nuclear spins.
One of the important questions on the production of SPH via photodissociation that
remained open was the depolarization rate of the Hydrogen isotope fragments produced
in the “high density” regime, i.e. at the limit where all Hydrogen halide molecules
are photodissociated, and only SPH and halide radicals exist at the photodissociated volume. At this limit, spin-exchange collisions between SPH and Cl are expected to quickly depolarize SPH. However, work by Sofikitis et al demonstrated depolarization lifetimes of order ∼ 10 ns for SPH and SPD produced from the photodissociation
of HBr and DI, respectively, much longer than expected if the hydrogen-halide spinexchange
cross-section was comparable to the hydrogen-alkali value. Studies in HCl,
in densities of an order of magnitude higher, were conducted, and the results are
demonstrated in this study. The H-Cl spin-exchange cross-section is estimated to be
σSEH−Cl = 7×10-17cm2, which is the first measurement of this quantity.
The high density of SPH produced with this method can also be utilized for
the development of a sensitive, nanosecond-resolved magnetometer. The population
transfer between the hyperfine states offers a fast, reliable modulation at one of the
most well-known physical quantities in the world, the hyperfine frequency of Hydrogen
f=1.420405 GHz. This modulation can be utilized to detect weak, time-dependent
magnetic fields which induce a splitting in the hyperfine states of Hydrogen. In
this study, a proof-of-principle of this novel instrument is demonstrated, with the
detection of μT magnetic fields in a second, via direct measurements of the hyperfine beating frequencies. Furthermore, we demonstrate a detailed proposal for achieving
nanosecond-resolved measurements, with sensitivites of order pT/pulse.
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