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)

Link for 'decay'?

I think it is needed to give the jargon 'decay' a link in this article. The jargon appears in articles frequently but I never see a link for that jargon. I suggest we should keep it in red until someone really knows how to link it and makes it blue. - Justin545 (talk) 03:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Explain jargon - Justin545 (talk) 03:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe so, but the way to do that is to figure out the correct title for an eventual article on the subject and link to that. (Don't know where to link) is not a properly-formed link.--Srleffler (talk) 04:37, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

lol, that looks funny :p Well, I just wanted to make people notice there are still a jargon in the article. People may never be aware of the jargon if I didn't made it red. Making the jargon in red would encourage the reader to correct it to a proper link. So do you have better idea helpful to explain the jargon or encourage peple to fix it without violating the policy of wiki? Or can you do me a favor to give it a proper link? Thanks! - Justin545 (talk) 05:54, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you found the right solution for this article: linking "excitation and decay" to Excited state solves the problem.--Srleffler (talk) 14:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)