Conversion of alignment of orientation in a magnetic field

An aligned atomic state with fine or hyperfine structure will become oriented upon application of an external magnetic field. The conversion for the 2p3P, 3p3P, and 3d3D multiplets of helium has been calculated. By expanding the density matrix into the irreducible tensor components of orientation and alignment operators, the calculation expresses orientation and alignment as an initial value problem. For the three multiplets we find as much as 2% orientation will result from initial alignment. An experiment is proposed to measure this effect