Talk:Optical pumping

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Hi, I've made some changes to this stub, as I think it is more general to say that optical pumping is not necessarilly preparing the atom to the highest "Zeeman splitting" level. Assuming no B field then there is no "highest energy" Zeeman level as they are degenerate within the same hyperfine level...

If it was originally intended to mean "highest mF value" then this is true only for the case of RH circular polarised light and not true in general for linear polarised light.

I would like to add some references here but I'm not sure how as I'm new to editing wikiedia - I'll see if I can work it out soon :) DanielSlaughter 04:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I added some links, and also removed "polarized" from the introduction. Many laser gain media, for example, can be pumped with unpolarized light. They can even be optically pumped with incoherent light. Whether you need polarization depends on what state you are trying to prepare. If you're looking for info on how to add citations and references to an article, check out WP:CITE, WP:CITET, and WP:Footnotes.--Srleffler 04:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
ok thanks I was unaware that there are applications for optical pumping with incoherent and unpolarised light. DanielSlaughter 04:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Many types of solid-state lasers can be pumped with arc lamps or flashlamps, for example. This was pretty common until not long ago, but diode laser pumping is rapidly taking over.--Srleffler 04:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)