arXiv:1807.05745 · Physical Review A
Λ -enhanced gray-molasses cooling of cesium atoms on the D2 line
Ya-Fen Hsiao, Y.-J. Lin, Ying-Cheng Chen
Abstract
We present a systematic study of the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-enhanced gray molasses cooling ($\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-GMC) of cesium atoms on the ${D}_{2}$ transition. Due to the large splitting in the excited hyperfine transitions of the cesium ${D}_{2}$ line, it is relatively simple to implement the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-GMC with a suitable frequency control of the trapping and repumping lasers of the magneto-optical trap (MOT). We achieve a temperature of $1.7\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.2\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$ with $3.2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{8}$ atoms. The phase space density of atoms is $1.43\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$. Compared to the condition with a bare MOT or a MOT with gray-molasses cooling without $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ enhancement, there is an increase in the phase space density by a factor of more than ${10}^{3}$ and 10, respectively.