A proposal to measure atomic alignment and orientation parameters using laser photon deflection

In this paper, it is pointed out that the optical force which an atom experiences when excited by near-resonant laser light can under certain conditions depend not only on the atomic energy sublevel populations, but also on the horizontal coherences between the sublevels. A theoretical investigation of this behaviour is presented and a novel technique is proposed for applying photon deflection of atoms to the measurement of atomic collision alignment and orientation parameters.