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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Trapping of atoms in a dark magneto-optical lattice

Nelly Pavlovna Konopleva, Anatolii M Tumaikin

Published Feb 25, 1999• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The dark magneto-optical lattice for atoms with J yields J -1 transition is considered. The periodic potential is formed using a (sigma) + - (sigma) - laser field and a uniform magnetic field orthogonal to the light waves propagation. The dynamics of slowly moving atoms is investigated for J equals 1 in the quasiclassical approximation. The cases of a weak and strong dark states destruction by the magnetic field are analyzed. The sub- Doppler cooling for a blue detuning from resonance is demonstrated for a low laser field power. The dark atomic lattice creation in the case of the light-induced shift is much less than the Zeeman splitting is predicted.

DOI
10.1117/12.340155

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The dark magneto-optical lattice for atoms with J yields J -1 transition is considered. The periodic potential is formed using a (sigma) + - (sigma) - laser field and a uniform magnetic field orthogonal to the light waves propagation. The dynamics of slowly moving atoms is investigated for J equals 1 in the quasiclassical approximation. The cases of a weak and strong dark states destruction by the magnetic field are analyzed. The sub- Doppler cooling for a blue detuning from resonance is demonstrated for a low laser field power. The dark atomic lattice creation in the case of the light-induced shift is much less than the Zeeman splitting is predicted.
The dark magneto-optical lattice for atoms with a J yields J - 1 transition is considered. The periodic potential is formed using a (sigma) + - (sigma) - laser field and a uniform magnetic field orthogonal to the light waves propagation. The dynamics of slowly moving atoms was investigated for J equals 1 in the quasiclassical approximation. The sub-Doppler cooling for a blue detuning from resonance is demonstrated. The dark atomic lattice creation in the case of the light induced shift is much less than the Zeeman splitting is predicted.
We present a new type of lattice for trapping cold atoms in nearly-dark states where they weakly interact with light. The periodic potential is obtained with fields in a lin ⊥ lin configuration tuned on the blue side of a J → J transition and in the presence of a uniform static magnetic field. A numerical analysis performed for J = 4 demonstrates the occurrence of very small absorption widths and large populations in the lowest vibrational states. These lattices should be interesting for increasing the atomic density and for observing delocalized atomic wave functions.
We theoretically investigate the damping and trapping forces in a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap (MOT), by numerically solving the optical Bloch equations.We focus on the case where there are dark states because the atom is driven on a 'type-II' system where the angular momentum of the excited state, F¢, is less than or equal to that of the ground state, F. For these systems we find that the force in a three-dimensional light field has very different behaviour to its one dimensional counterpart.This differs from the more commonly used 'type-I' systems (F F 1 ¢ = + ) where the 1D and 3D behaviours are similar.Unlike type-I systems where, for red-detuned light, both Doppler and sub-Doppler forces damp the atomic motion towards zero velocity, in type-II systems in 3D, the Doppler force and polarization gradient force have opposite signs.As a result, the atom is driven towards a non-zero equilibrium velocity, v 0 , where the two forces cancel.We find that v 0 2 scales linearly with the intensity of the light and is fairly insensitive to the detuning from resonance.We also discover a new magneto-optical force that alters the normal MOT force at low magnetic fields and whose influence is greatest in the type-II systems.We discuss the implications of these findings for the laser cooling and magneto-optical trapping of molecules where type-II transitions are unavoidable in realising closed optical cycling transitions.
The motion of atoms in a dark magneto-optical lattice is considered. This lattice is formed by a non-uniformly polarized laser field in the presence of a static magnetic field. Cold atoms are localized in the vicinity of points where dark states are not destroyed by a magnetic field. As a result, the optical interaction tends to zero (dark or grey lattices). Depending on the field configuration such a lattice can exhibit one-dimensional (1D) or two-dimensional (2D) periodicity. It is shown that in 1D and 2D dark magneto-optical lattices the effects connected with the Bose statistics of particles can be observed under temperatures 10 -5 -10 -6 K and densities 10 11 -10 12 cm -3 , i.e. those that are usual for current experiments on laser cooling.
We demonstrate a new type of optical lattice which confines atoms in nearly dark states. The lattice is formed by cooperation of an optical standing wave detuned to the blue with respect to an atomic $F\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}F\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1$ transition and a homogeneous magnetic field. The atoms are predominantly localized where the light is purely $\ensuremath{\pi}$ polarized such that they are optically pumped to the mF=0{m}_{F}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}0mF​=0 Zeeman component which is decoupled from the light field. We have observed quantized vibrations of the localized atoms by means of probe transmission spectroscopy. Our ``dark'' optical lattice works in two and three dimensions.
In red-detuned magneto-optical traps (MOTs) of molecules, sub-Doppler heating competes with Doppler cooling, resulting in high temperature and low density. A solution is offered by the blue-detuned MOT where sub- Doppler cooling dominates and the cloud is compressed. Several blue-detuned molecular MOTs have been implemented. A recent implementation relies on a pair of orthogonally polarized components whose frequency separation is smaller than the transition linewidth. We identify the trapping force in these MOTs. At a certain magnetic field, there is a state that is dark to the laser propagating in one direction, but not to the counterpropagating one. This Zeeman-induced dark state (ZIDS) sets up an imbalance in the photon scattering rate, leading to a restoring force. We also study the role of the moving lattices generated by the closely spaced frequency components of the light. We show that there is a velocity-dependent force that drives the molecules toward the speeds of these moving lattices, and that over a relevant range of magnetic fields this combines with the ZIDS force to transport molecules toward the center of the MOT. Here, gray molasses cooling, assisted by nonadiabatic transitions driven by the time-varying polarization of the light field, cools the molecules toward zero velocity. We study these mechanisms for model systems with simple level structures and then extend them to molecules with ground-state hyperfine structure.