Role of Polarization in Laser Spectroscopy of Hyperfine Ground State inMuonic Hydrogen and Helium-3

• Autor(a) principal: Sustelo, Luis Duarte Rodrigues
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/139163
• topic: Laser Spectroscopy; Hyperfine Structure; Bloch Equations; Laser Polarization; Muonic Hydrogen; Muonic Helium-3; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Outras Engenharias e Tecnologias

Laser spectroscopy have made possible the study of nuclear properties with highly accurate frequency-measurements of atomic transitions. When applied to muonic atoms, this capacity to resolve nuclear structure is further enhanced, and allows the measurement of the proton and -particle with unprecedented accuracy. Furthermore, by measuring the transition frequency of the Hyperfine Splitting (HFS) of the ground state of muonic hydrogen, it is even possible to probe subtle details of the nucleus, such as Zemach radius and nucleus polarizability. The Charge Radius Experiments with Muonic Atoms (CREMA)’s HyperMu experiment, was devised with the goal of measuring the HFS of the ground state of Muonic Hydrogen ( H) by observing the fast laser-excited atoms. Additionally, another experiment with the goal of measuring the HFS of the ground state ofMuonic Helium-3 ( 3He+) is also being planned by the CREMA collaboration which detects electron decay-asymmetries from laser-excited atoms. With the goal of optimizing the number of events detected in these experiments, all aspects must be optimized, including the polarization of the laser, i.e. if linear, circular or elliptical polarization produces a better expected value for the number of events detected. In this thesis, a theoretical framework was developed based on the optical Bloch equations, adding phenomenological populations for the detected events, as well as the Doppler effect. For the HyperMu experiment it was found no dependency on the polarization, while for the experiments based on electron-decay asymmetries it was confirmed that circular polarization produces the highest number of detected events. Moreover, it was found that even though the results are best for circular polarizations, the laser can have a reduced degree of circular polarization of up to 30% (mixture polarization of 70% circular and 30% linear), with the number of detected events only being compromised by 6%.