Temperature dependent relaxation lifetime T1, T2 measurements of the spin-polarized 87Rb atoms

Abstract Temperature dependent relaxation time of 87 Rb atoms, namely the longitudinal relaxation lifetime T 1 and the transverse relaxation lifetime T 2 are studied respectively by using the Franzen method and by measuring the optical rotation of a weak, linearly polarized probe light. Although the Franzen measurement in this work is taken with a weak probe light, the absorption of probe light can still destroy the spin polarization of 87 Rb atoms to a certain degree. However, a longer relaxation time of T 2 can be well achieved by measuring the optical rotation of linearly polarized light under 6 GHz detuning along the direction of red light. Results show that both T 1 and T 2 obey an exponential decay with temperature, and the temperature dependent decaying rate of relaxation is respectively 27.8 for T 1 and 25.0 for T 2 , indicating that temperature playing a similar role in the reaction to T 1 and T 2 .