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An accessible textbook for students and practitioners of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. It will be useful for scientists working with lasers. The book comes with an extensive freely downloadable software package and many colourful and animated illustrations. Additional materials are available for instructors.
List of contents
- I: INTRODUCTION TO LIGHT-ATOM INTERACTIONS
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Atomic states
- 3: A bit of angular-momentum theory
- 4: Atoms in external electric and magnetic fields
- 5: Polarized atoms
- 6: Polarized light
- 7: Atomic transitions
- 8: Coherence in atomic systems
- 9: Optical pumping
- 10: Light-atom interaction observed in transmitted light
- II: ADVANCED TOPICS
- 11: Nonlinear magneto-optical rotation
- 12: Perturbative and approximate methods for light-atom interactions
- 13: Polarization effects in transitions with partially resolved hyperfine structure
- 14: The effect of hyperfine splitting on nonlinear magneto-optical rotation
- 15: Coherence effects revisited
- 16: Collapse and revival in quantum beats
- 17: Nuclear quadrupole resonance and alignment-to-orientation conversion
- 18: Selective addressing of high-rank polarization moments
- 19: Tensor structure of the DC- and AC-Stark polarizabilities
- 20: Photoionization of polarized atoms with polarized light
- Appendix A: Constants, units, and notations
- Appendix B: Units of energy, frequency, and wavelength
- Appendix C: Reference data for hydrogen and the alkali atoms
- Appendix D: Classical rotations
- Appendix E: Nonlinear magneto-optical rotation with hyperfine structure
- Appendix F: The Atomic Density Matrix software package
About the author
Marcis Auzinsh is the Rector of the University of Latvia, where he was previously Chairman of the Senate, Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, and Head of Center of Excellence for Basic Research in Nanoscale Physics and Application. He has held visiting positions at universities around the world, and is a Member of Executive Commitee of the European Physical Society.
Dmitry Budker took his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley, where he won the 1994 American Physical Society Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics. He is now a Professor of Physics there. In 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 2009 became a American Physical Society Outstanding Referee.
Simon M. Rochester is a Graduate Student Researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, where he holds a NASA Earth System Science Fellowship.
Summary
This book is addressed to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students involved in research in atomic, molecular, and optical physics. It will also be useful to researchers practising in this field. It gives an intuitive, yet sufficiently detailed and rigorous introduction to light-atom interactions with a particular emphasis on the symmetry aspects of the interaction, especially those associated with the angular momentum of atoms and light. The book will enable readers to carry out practical calculations on their own, and is richly illustrated with examples drawn from current research topics, such as resonant nonlinear magneto-opticals. The book comes with a software package for a variety of atomic-physics calculations and further interactive examples that is freely downloadable from the book's web page, as well as additional materials (such as power-point presentations) available to instructors who adopt the text for their courses.
Additional text
The recently published book 'Optically Polarized Atoms' by Marcis Auzinsh, Dmitry Budker and Simon M. Rochester will be a unique and valuable addition to the library of anyone -- students or established researchers [...] It provides a rich mine of information about atomic physics that is hard to find elsewhere. I intend to keep a copy on my shelf of favorite physics books.
