Professor Saam is an experimental atomic, molecular, and optical physicist who specializes in spin physics and magnetic resonance in a variety of gas-phase and solid-state systems. In particular, he works on spin-exchange optical pumping (SEOP), whereby circularly polarized (laser) light is used to optically pump and polarize an alkali-metal vapor (typically rubidium, but also potassium or cesium). Such polarized vapors are interesting in their own right, having applications, for example, to precision magnetometry; but they can also collisionally polarize the nuclei of non-zero-spin noble gases, a technique which works particularly well with the stable spin-1/2 isotopes, 3He and 129Xe. Such gases are often referred to as hyperpolarized, and have applications to the study of physics beyond the Standard Model, surface physics, quantum chaos, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the human lung. Prof. Saam is interested in the intrinsic physics of SEOP, including relaxation mechanisms of the polarized spins, as well as several of the applications.
