Improving sodium laser guide star brightness by polarization switching

Scientific Reports
Tingwei FanYan Feng

Abstract

Optical pumping with circularly polarized light has been used to enhance the brightness of sodium laser guide star. But the benefit is reduced substantially due to the precession of sodium atoms in geomagnetic field. Switching the laser between left and right circular polarization at the Larmor frequency is proposed to improve the return. With ESO's laser guide star system at Paranal as example, numerical simulation shows that the return flux is increased when the angle between geomagnetic field and laser beam is larger than 60°, as much as 50% at 90°. The proposal is significant since most astronomical observation is at angle between 60° and 90° and it only requires a minor addition to the delivery optics of present laser system.

References

Jan 8, 2010·Nature
Feb 16, 2011·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·James M HigbieDmitry Budker

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Citations

Sep 30, 2018·Nature Communications·Felipe Pedreros BustosSimon Rochester
Dec 1, 2018·Optics Letters·Felipe Pederos BustosSimon Rochester
Apr 3, 2020·Optics Letters·Xuezong YangRichard P Mildren
Nov 1, 2017·Optics Letters·Xuezong YangYan Feng

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Software Mentioned

LGSBloch package for Mathematica

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