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	Analysis of chemical interactions during filling a cesium vapor cell for a quantum magnetometer</div>

Yulmetova Olga S., Shcherbak Alexander G. , Reshetnyak Polina E., Zavitaev Alexander S., Alexander N. Shevchenko, Yulmetova Raliya F.

2024 , VOLUME 24, NUMBER 3 ( may-june )

ISSN 2226-1494 (print), ISSN 2500-0373 (online)

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Nikiforov
Vladimir O.
D.Sc., Prof.

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doi: 10.17586/2226-1494-2024-24-3-438-447

Analysis of chemical interactions during filling a cesium vapor cell for a quantum magnetometer

O. S. Yulmetova, A. G. Shcherbak, P. E. Reshetnyak, A. S. Zavitaev, A. N. Shevchenko, R. . Yulmetova

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Article in Russian

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Yulmetova O.S., Shcherbak A.G., Reshetnyak P.E., Zavitaev A.S., Shevchenko A.N., Yulmetova R.F. Analysis of chemical interactions during filling a cesium vapor cell for a quantum magnetometer. Scientific and Technical Journal of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, 2024, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 438–447 (in Russian). doi: 10.17586/2226-1494-2024-24-3-438-447

Abstract

The results of the development and research of the technological process for manufacturing spherical vapor cells are presented. Such cells are used in quantum devices, such as magnetometers, gyroscopes, and atomic clocks. Their work is based on optical pumping and detection of the state of alkali metal vapors, in particular cesium. To increase the lifetime of cesium spin polarization in the vapor cell, it is filled with a buffer inert gas. The quality of cell manufacturing directly affects such device characteristics as the width of resonance lines and the achievable signal-to-noise ratio. The proposed cell manufacturing technology simplifies the technological process, eliminates the use of specialized equipment, and increases the reproducibility of results associated with chemical reactions of an alkali metal with foreign impurities in a buffer gas. This is achieved by detecting the formed compounds and excluding them from the composition of the gaseous environment of the cells through the selection of a reasonable sequence of technological operations in the cell manufacturing cycle. The use of traditional methods of X-ray diffraction is associated with the need to depressurize the vapor cell with cesium which leads to the inevitable reaction of cesium with components of the air environment. The work proposes a two-stage analytical assessment of the composition of the gas mixture. At the first stage, the thermodynamic resolution of all possible reactions in the cesium-nitrogen-impurity oxygen system is determined. At the second stage, the color spectrum of the spectra of experimentally obtained reaction products is compared with the color of the products of thermodynamically allowed interactions. Thermodynamic analysis based on a two-stage approach made it possible to identify the formation of cesium suboxides in a vapor cell when it was heated in the temperature range of 273–700 K. To exclude them from the composition of the vapor cell, a sequence of operations was proposed. It involves the formation of an ampoule using the glass blowing method which has a technological cylindrical part and a spherical cell connected to it by a constriction. High purity cesium encapsulated in a glass shell is placed into the technological part of the ampoule, after which the ampoule is evacuated. After opening the capsule with cesium, thermal distillation of pure cesium into a spherical zone takes place. The technological process is completed by filling the cell with buffer gas, after which it is sealed off. The absence of heating during filling a vapor cell with nitrogen significantly simplifies the technological process and minimizes the amount of foreign impurities in the form of cesium suboxides in the gas mixture.

Keywords: vapor cell, cesium, cesium suboxides, buffer gas, Gibbs energy, chemical thermodynamics, laser spectroscopy

Acknowledgements. Authors express their gratitude to Michel A.G. for manufacturing ampoules using the glass blowing method, Dementyev M.M. for assistance in vacuamizing and filling ampoules with nitrogen as well as carrying out spectral measurements.

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