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AIP conference proceedings

Production of bright, cold beams for atomic collision experiments

K. A. H. van Leeuwen, Edgar J. D. Vredenbregt, P. G. M. Sebel, Jan P. J. Driessen, Maarten D. Hoogerland, Herman C. W. Beijerinck

Published Jan 1, 1996• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Laser manipulation techniques for neutral atoms can be used to produce atomic beams which are more intense, brighter and colder than can be achieved by any other means. These beams will have a tremendous impact on the experimental study of low‐energy atomic collisions. We first describe the design and operation of an intensifier for a thermal (axial velocity 600 m/s) beam of metastable neon atoms. The intensifier produces a gain in beam brightness of a factor 160 and a typical gain in usable flux of a factor 1400. Next, we discuss the design, construction and preliminary tests of a setup to produce an atomic beam which is slow and cold as well as bright and intense. The setup is expected to produce a beam of metastable atoms with an axial velocity of 100 m/s, a spread therein of 1.5 m/s, a diameter of 1 mm, a residual divergence of 1 mrad and a flux of 1012 atoms/s.

DOI
10.1063/1.49765

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arXiv:1505.01567•May 7, 2015•0 citations
Laser manipulation techniques for neutral atoms can be used to produce atomic beams which are more intense, brighter and colder than can be achieved by any other means. These beams will have a tremendous impact on the experimental study of low‐energy atomic collisions. We first describe the design and operation of an intensifier for a thermal (axial velocity 600 m/s) beam of metastable neon atoms. The intensifier produces a gain in beam brightness of a factor 160 and a typical gain in usable flux of a factor 1400. Next, we discuss the design, construction and preliminary tests of a setup to produce an atomic beam which is slow and cold as well as bright and intense. The setup is expected to produce a beam of metastable atoms with an axial velocity of 100 m/s, a spread therein of 1.5 m/s, a diameter of 1 mm, a residual divergence of 1 mrad and a flux of 1012 atoms/s.
We propose to use a three-step transverse and longitudinal cooling scheme, to compress and collimate a strongly diverging flow of metastable rare gas atoms. Simulations show that an atom beam flux of 1010 8-1 in a small diameter (<1 mm), well-collimated (divergence <10 mrad), slow (50 ms-1 ) atomic beam could be achieved. This technique can be extremely valuable in many areas of atomic physics, e.g. in (electron) spectroscopy and atomic collision physics where high beam densities are desirable.
We have developed a ``beam brightener'' in which several different laser cooling methods produce a highly monochromatic, unidirectional and intense beam of metastable Ne(3s;^3P_2) atoms. The beam brightener consists of four main stages. From an exited neon source we capture in a collimating section 5× 10^11 Ne(3s)/s from which ≈ 50 % is slowed to 100 m/s in a Zeeman slower. The final velocity distribution shows a width of 3.3 m/s uc(RMS,) corresponding to a temperature of 12 mK. A fraction of ≈ 25 % of these cold atoms is captured by a magneto-optic compressor and molded into a 0.7 mm uc(FWHM) wide atomic beam that contains up to 5× 10^10 Ne(3s)/s. The resulting density is 1.1× 10^9 Ne(3s)/cm^3. In the final step, a Doppler cooler is used to minimize the divergence of the beam to 10 mrad. This value will further improve once the Doppler cooler is replaced by a sub-Doppler cooler. We plan to use this ``bright beam'' to investigate the ionization probabilities in Ne(3s)+Ne(3s) collisions. Emphasis will be on the suppression of ionization when the atoms are spin-polarized. This has important implications for the possibilities of using metastable atoms for BEC-type experiments. Present adress: NIST
The study of collisions between excited atoms requires high-intensity atomic beams to achieve detector signals of sufficient strength. Producing large densities of excited rare gas atoms R is especially difficult, since with conventional sources metastable atoms R make up a tiny fraction of ≈10-5 of the total beam flux. In such cases, 'brightening' the beam is the only way to achieve a sufficiently large flux. We have followed a scheme proposed by Metcalf to brighten an atomic beam of neon. The setup employs laser cooling on the Ne((3s)3P2 → (3p)3D3) cycling transition, and consists of three stages. First, we collimate all atoms emerging from a discharge source within a half-angle θ0 = 100 mrad. Second, the collimated beam is focused to a point. Third, the now converging beam is re-collimated to form a thin and bright atomic beam.
We realize a continuous, intense, cold molecular and atomic beam source based on buffer-gas cooling. Hot vapor (up to 600 K) from an oven is mixed with cold (15 K) neon buffer gas, and then emitted into a high-flux beam. The novel use of cold neon as a buffer gas produces a forward velocity distribution and low-energy tail that is comparable to much colder helium-based sources. We expect this source to be trivially generalizable to a very wide range of atomic and molecular species with significant vapor pressure below 1000 K. The source has properties that make it a good starting point for laser cooling of molecules or atoms, cold collision studies, trapping, or nonlinear optics in buffer-gas-cooled atomic or molecular gases. A continuous guided beam of cold deuterated ammonia with a flux of 3×10\\(^{11}\\) ND\\(_{3}\\) molecules s\\(^{−1}\\) and a continuous free-space beam of cold potassium with a flux of 1×10\\(^{16}\\) K atoms s\\(^{−1}\\) are realized.
We realize a continuous, intense, cold molecular and atomic beam source based on buffer-gas cooling. Hot vapor (up to 600 K) from an oven is mixed with cold (15 K) neon buffer gas, and then emitted into a high-flux beam. The novel use of cold neon as a buffer gas produces a forward velocity distribution and low-energy tail that is comparable to much colder helium-based sources. We expect this source to be trivially generalizable to a very wide range of atomic and molecular species with significant vapor pressure below 1000 K. The source has properties that make it a good starting point for laser cooling of molecules or atoms, cold collision studies, trapping, or nonlinear optics in buffer-gas-cooled atomic or molecular gases. A continuous guided beam of cold deuterated ammonia with a flux of 3 × 10 11 ND 3 molecules s −1 and a continuous free-space beam of cold potassium with a flux of 1 × 10 16 K atoms s −1 are realized.
This paper presents detailed characteristics of an ultra-cold bright metastable neon atomic beam which we have been using for atom-interferometric applications. The basis of the device is an atomic beam released from a magneto-optical trap (MOT) which is operated with a high intensity trapping laser, high magnetic quadrupole field, and large laser detuining. Mainly due to the complex structure of three dimensional magnetic field and laser beams, a bright small spot of atoms is formed near the center of the quadrupole magnetic field under an appropriate operating condition. We obtained the minimum trap diameter of 50 micron meter, the atomic density nearly 10^{13}cm^{-3}, and the atomic temperature slightly less than the Doppler limited temperature of 200 micro-K. By releasing trapped atoms we obtained an bright cold atomic beam which is not far from the collision limited atomic density.