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Physical Review Letters

Cesium atoms bouncing in a stable gravitational cavity

C.G. Aminoff, Andrew M. Steane, Philippe Bouyer, Pierre Desbiolles, Jean Dalibard, Claude N. Cohen-Tannoudji

Published Nov 8, 1993• 231 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A curved mirror for atoms was made from an evanescent wave, formed by internal reflection of a quasiresonant laser beam at a curved glass surface. A cold cloud of cesium atoms was dropped onto the mirror and observed to rebound more than 8 times. The mirror size and reflectivity were studied, and reasonable agreement with a simple theory obtained. With 800 mW of laser power and a mirror of 1 mm diameter, we observed up to 73% of the atoms returning after each bounce, the losses being mostly during the free flight between bounces.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.71.3083

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A curved mirror for atoms was made from an evanescent wave, formed by internal reflection of a quasiresonant laser beam at a curved glass surface. A cold cloud of cesium atoms was dropped onto the mirror and observed to rebound more than 8 times. The mirror size and reflectivity were studied, and reasonable agreement with a simple theory obtained. With 800 mW of laser power and a mirror of 1 mm diameter, we observed up to 73% of the atoms returning after each bounce, the losses being mostly during the free flight between bounces.
Summary form only given, as follows. Atomic cavities provide a convenient way to store atoms without perturbing them too much. We have recently built such a cavity for cesium atoms. A curved mirror was made for an evanescent wave, formed by internal reflection of a quasiresonant laser beam at a curved glass surface. A cold cloud of cesium atoms was dropped onto the mirror (Fig. 1a) and observed to rebound up to 10 times (Fig. 1b). The mirror size and reflectivity were studied, and reasonable agreement with a simple theory was obtained. With 800 mW of laser power and a mirror of 1 mm diameter, we observed up to 73% of the atoms returning after each bounce. We will present these experimental results, and we will also discuss some prospects to investigate the quantum nature of the atomic motion in such a cavity.
Considerable progress has recently been made in controling the motion of free atomic particles by means of light pressure exerted by laser radiation. The free fall of atoms and bouncing on a reflecting surface made from evanescent wave formed by internal reflection of a quasiresonant laser beam at a curved glass surface in the presence of homogeneous gravitational field has been observed. In this paper we present the energy quantization of this system by making use the asymptotic expansion method. It is shown that for large nnn the levels go like n2/3n^{2/3}n2/3 which may be compared with n2n^2n2 for the infinite square well.
Multiple bounces of cold rubidium atoms have been observed for times up to one second in a trap formed by gravity and a 2 cm-diameter spherical mirror made from a sinusoidally magnetized floppy disk. We have studied the dynamics of the atoms bouncing in this trap from several different heights up to 40.5 mm and we conclude that the atoms are reflected specularly and with reflectivity 1.01(3). Slight roughness of the mirror is caused by harmonics in the magnetization of the surface and by discontinuities at the boundaries between recorded tracks. As the next step in this atom optics program we propose using a magnetic mirror to create a 2D atomic gas. We discuss how cold atoms can be loaded into the ground state of a static magnetic potential well that exists above the surface of the mirror as a consequence of the intermediate-field Zeeman effect.
We present an experiment where a cloud of cold caesium atoms is dropped onto an atomic mirror formed by a laser evanescent wave, and is cooled during the reflection. This cooling is due to a single Sisyphus process, transferring atoms from one ground-state hyperfine level to another, less coupled to the evanescent wave. We compare our results with a simple one-dimensional theoretical model. We also give the first experimental evidence for a large increase in the confinement lifetime of the atoms in this ‘gravitational cavity’ because of the cooling process.
We calculate the modes in a stable gravitational cavity where the atomic mirror at the bottom of the bounce is caused by an internally reflected intense Gaussian-mode laser beam. In contrast to Wallis, Dalibard, and Cohen-Tannoudji [Appl. Phys. B 54, 407 (1992)], who treated the bottom bouncing mechanism as due to an infinite potential, we include the effect of the exponentially decaying potential caused by the evanescent wave. Nevertheless, we find that above this evanescent wave potential the mode structure corresponds exactly to that obtained using an infinite potential. The allowed energies differ slightly due to the phase change through the evanescent wave. The broadening of the modes due to the damping effects of spontaneous emission was calculated and because of the intrinsic transverse width of the modes was found to depend strongly on energy and transverse excitation, which differs from a simple one-dimensional classical calculation. The finesse and QQQ of the cavity due to the damping effects of spontaneous emission were also calculated and in contrast to an optical Fabry-P\'erot cavity were found to depend strongly on energy.