Optical pumping in rubidium-87 — Circular polarisation on the (F g = 2 ↔ F e = 3) transition in the D2-line

We present results of a method for calculating optical pumping rates in 87 Rb, as described in [1]. We use circularly polarised light on the (F g = 2 ↔ F e = 3) transition to populate a stretched angular momentum state in the F g = 2 hyperfine structure level of the ground state. The method is shown to function well for the the studied system. Explicit analytical equations for all level populations as functions of time, detuning, intensity and starting parameters are derived.