The Stark effect of the hyperfine structure of cesium

We present an overview of the quadratic Stark effect in the ground state of alkali atoms. On the basis of symmetry arguments we show that the second order Stark interaction vanishes in the spherically symmetric S1/2 ground state while an extension of the perturbation theory to third order, including the hyperfine interaction, leads to scalar and tensor polarizabilities. We discuss the effect on the hyperfine structure of the Cs ground state. We report 2 new independent measurements of the tensor polarizability &agr;2(3) (F = 4), which are in very good agreement with prior experiments, and we present an extension of the theory of the Stark interaction which bridges a 40 year old discrepancy between experimental and theoretical values of the tensor polarizability. We also report the presence of a sign error in prior theory and discuss its relevance for primary frequency standards.

[1]  T. Hänsch,et al.  Observation of Ramsey fringes in nonlinear Faraday rotation , 1993 .

[2]  André Clairon,et al.  Measurement of the Stark shift of the Cs hyperfine splitting in an atomic fountain , 1998 .

[3]  T. Hänsch,et al.  Optical pumping of Cs atoms in solid 4 He , 1999 .

[4]  A. Weis,et al.  Optical And Magneto-Optical Spectroscopy Of Point Defects In Condensed Helium , 1998 .

[5]  Wayne M. Itano,et al.  Shift of 2 S 12 hyperfine splittings due to blackbody radiation , 1982 .

[6]  Weis,et al.  Long electronic spin relaxation times of Cs atoms in solid 4He. , 1995, Physical review letters.

[7]  J. Zacharias,et al.  Stark Effect on Cesium-133 Hyperfine Structure , 1957 .

[8]  S. Legowski,et al.  Atomic-Beam Resonance Measurement of the Differential Polarizability between Zeeman Substates in the Ground State of the Cesium Atom , 1968 .

[9]  P. Sandars,et al.  Removal of Zeeman-Level Degeneracy in Alkali Atoms by an Electric Field , 1964 .

[10]  V. Dzuba,et al.  Frequency shift of the cesium clock transition due to blackbody radiation. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[11]  K. Beloy,et al.  High-accuracy calculation of the blackbody radiation shift in the 133Cs primary frequency standard. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[12]  S. Ulzega Theoretical and experimental study of the Stark effect in the ground state of alkali atoms in helium crystals , 2006 .

[13]  J. Angel,et al.  The hyperfine structure Stark effect I. Theory , 1968, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

[14]  S. Porsev,et al.  Determination of lifetimes of 6 P J levels and ground-state polarizability of Cs from the van der Waals coefficient C 6 , 2002 .

[15]  H. Gould,et al.  High precision measurement of the static dipole polarizability of cesium. , 2003, Physical review letters.