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arXiv:0901.1707

Enhanced cooling of rubidium atoms in two-frequency diffuse lights

Wenzhuo Zhang, Hua-Dong Cheng, Ling Xiao, Liang Liu, Yuzhu Wang

Published Jan 13, 2009• 0 citations
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Abstract

In this paper we describe an experiment of efficient cooling of $^{87}$Rb atoms in two-frequency diffuse laser lights. Compared with single frequency diffuse light, two-frequency diffuse lights have wider velocity capture range and thus can cool more atoms. In our experiment, the maximum number of cooled atoms can reach up to $3.9\times10^9$. Such a result is quite useful in building a compact cold atom clock.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.0901.1707

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In this paper we describe an experiment of efficient cooling of 87^{87}87Rb atoms in two-frequency diffuse laser lights. Compared with single frequency diffuse light, two-frequency diffuse lights have wider velocity capture range and thus can cool more atoms. In our experiment, the maximum number of cooled atoms can reach up to 3.9×1093.9\times10^93.9×109. Such a result is quite useful in building a compact cold atom clock.
In this paper we describe an experiment on laser cooling of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms directly from a vapor background in diffuse light. Diffuse light is produced in a ceramic integrating sphere by multiple scattering of two laser beams injected through multimode fibers. A probe beam, whose propagation direction is either horizontal or vertical, is used to detect cold atoms. We measured the absorption spectra of the cold atoms by scanning the frequency of the probe beam, and observed both the absorption signal and the time of flight signal after we switched off the cooling light, from which we estimated the temperature and the number of cold atoms. This method is clearly attractive for building a compact cold atom clock.
To date, the laser cooling of rubidium atoms has inevitably relied on 780 nm cooling light corresponding to the first excited state 5 P 3 / 2 . Here, we demonstrate diffuse laser cooling of Rb 87 atoms using the 420 nm 5 S 1 / 2 → 6 P 3 / 2 transition without a preceding 780 nm cooling stage. A high-power 420 nm laser is used as the cooling light to produce cold atoms in a 1-m-long diffuse-cooling cell. Absorption spectroscopy yields a cold-atom density of approximately 1.4 × 10 11 m − 3 . We compare the cooling performance of the 420 nm and conventional 780 nm diffuse-cooling schemes and verify the feasibility of using the high-excited-state transition as an independent cooling channel in this large-volume diffuse-cooling system. This approach provides an alternative cooling/pumping pathway for continuous cold-atom active optical clocks, where compatibility with the clock-lasing process and reduced cooling-light-induced perturbations are important. It is also expected to open up research directions and application prospects in frontier fields such as Rydberg atoms, quantum information, and so on.
For cold samples of laser-cooled atoms to be useful in emerging technologies such as compact atomic clocks and sensors, it is necessary to achieve small sample sizes while retaining a large number of cold atoms. Achieving large atom numbers in a small system is a major challenge for producing miniaturized laser-cooled atomic clocks, since the number of captured atoms in a vapor-cell magneto-optical trap (MOT) scales as the fourth power of the laser beam diameter. This strong dependence on size is fundamentally set by the maximum spontaneous light force ħkγ/2, where ħk is the photon momentum and γ/2 is the maximum spontaneous photon scatter rate of a saturated transition of linewidth γ. We are attempting to surmount the limit imposed by spontaneous emission by using bichromatic cooling - a technique that uses stimulated emission to slow the atoms. We have built a table-top experiment that uses stimulated-emission bichromatic cooling to pre-cool rubidium atoms and dramatically enhance the trappable atom number in a small MOT. The apparatus lets us test how bichromatic cooling scales with miniaturization. Here we report on our first experimental results of cooling a thermal beam of rubidium atoms down to MOT capture velocities.
Cold 87Rb atom's loading in an integrating sphere with diffuse light is analyzed theoretically and experimentally. The experimental results show that diffuse light cooling has the greatest efficiency to cool the most atoms when the red detuning between the frequencies of cooling light and atom transition is about 3.3\Γ (Γ is the natural linewidth, 6.065 MHz). Theoretical analysis using rate equation and numerical calculations on the cold atom number and loading time agree with the experimental results. This integrating sphere cooling would be a novel method for cooling atoms and lead to a new and robust cold atom source for atomic clock.