Spin exchange in polarized deuterium

We have measured the vector and tensor polarization of an atomic deuterium target as a function of the target density. The polarized deuterium was produced in an atomic beam source and injected into a storage cell. For this experiment, the atomic beam source was operated without rf transitions, in order to avoid complications from the unknown efficiency of these transitions. In this mode, the atomic beam is vector and tensor polarized and both polarizations can be measured simultaneously. We used a 1.2-cm-diam and 27-cm-long storage cell, which yielded an average target density between 3 and 9x10{sup 11} at/cm{sup 3}. We find that the tensor polarization decreases with increasing target density while the vector polarization remains constant. The data are in quantitative agreement with the calculated effect of spin exchange between deuterium atoms at low field.