The Theory of the Stimulated Photon Echo in a Magnetic Field. 1. The Effect of the Non-Faraday Rotation of the Polarization Plane

The theory of stimulated photon echo formation in a gaseous medium subjected to a constant and uniform axial magnetic field by exciting pulses with small areas is developed under the assumption of arbitrary values of the total angular momenta of the optically allowed resonant transition levels and taking into account the spontaneous radiative input from the upper resonant level to the lower. The assumption enabled us to analyze the polarization properties of the long-lived stimulated photon echo which is planned for use in optical systems for information recording and processing. The analytical expressions for the angle of magnetic non-Faraday rotation of the stimulated photon echo polarization plane are obtained for the cases, where all the three exciting pulses propagate through the gaseous medium in the same direction and where the third exciting pulse propagates in the direction opposite to that of the first two pulses. A significant difference of the stimulated photon echo polarization properties in these two cases is found. It is shown that this difference is the greatest for the optically allowed transitions having large angular momentum values of their resonant levels.