Optical Pumping: Visualization of Steady State Populations and Polarizations

This Demonstration illustrates the rearrangement of Zeeman sublevel populations by the optical pumping of atoms with circularly or linearly polarized light. You can control the power and polarization of the light as well as the angular momenta of the states coupled by the light. The effect of optical pumping is illustrated by the relative sublevel populations, by the two lowest multipole moments (orientation and alignment), and by a probability surface.