RELAXATION AND GENERATION OF HYPERFINE COHERENCES IN AN OPTICALLY PUMPED HEAVY-ALKALI-METAL VAPOR UNDERGOING DOUBLE-RESONANCE EXCITATION

An extension of a theory of the relaxation, generation, and detection of Zeeman components in the presence of a weak static magnetic field t o experiments where hyperfine coherences are also involved is presente d. Our study focuses on the geometrical aspects of the optical-microwa ve double-resonance experiments without considering the transition-pro file related phenomena. We determine the coupled evolution equations o f the Zeeman and hyperfine components of the atomic density matrix in the irreducible formalism and calculate the stationary solutions to th ese equations.