  The creation and detection of atomic polarization is examined theoretically,
through the study of basic optical-pumping mechanisms and absorption and
fluorescence measurements, and the dependence of these processes on the size of
ground- and excited-state hyperfine splittings is determined. The consequences
of this dependence are studied in more detail for the case of nonlinear
magneto-optical rotation in the Faraday geometry (an effect requiring the
creation and detection of rank-two polarization in the ground state) with
alkali atoms. Analytic formulas for the optical rotation signal under various
experimental conditions are presented.
