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Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters

2D laser collimation of a cold Cs beam induced by a transverse B field

Mark D. Plimmer, N. Castagna, Giovanni Di Domenico, P. Thomann, А. В. Тайченачев, Valeriy I. Yudin

Published Jul 1, 2005• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We describe transverse collimation of a continuous cold cesium beam (longitudinal temperature 75 μK) induced by a two-dimensional, blue-detuned near-resonant optical lattice. The mechanism described for a lin-‖-lin configuration is made possible by the application of a transverse magnetic field B ⊥. The phenomenon described differs from gray molasses, for which any small magnetic field degrades cooling, as well as from magnetically induced laser cooling in red-detuned optical molasses, where there are no dark states. The lowest transverse temperature is experimentally found to vary as B ⊥ 2 . The collimated flux density shows a dip as a function of B ⊥, the width of which is proportional to the cube root of the laser intensity, general features predicted by our semiclassical model. This technique provides a sensitive tool for canceling transverse magnetic fields in situ at the milligauss level.

DOI
10.1134/1.2045331

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We describe transverse collimation of a continuous cold cesium beam (longitudinal temperature 75 μK) induced by a two-dimensional, blue-detuned near-resonant optical lattice. The mechanism described for a lin-‖-lin configuration is made possible by the application of a transverse magnetic field B ⊥. The phenomenon described differs from gray molasses, for which any small magnetic field degrades cooling, as well as from magnetically induced laser cooling in red-detuned optical molasses, where there are no dark states. The lowest transverse temperature is experimentally found to vary as B ⊥ 2 . The collimated flux density shows a dip as a function of B ⊥, the width of which is proportional to the cube root of the laser intensity, general features predicted by our semiclassical model. This technique provides a sensitive tool for canceling transverse magnetic fields in situ at the milligauss level.
We propose a simple atomic-beam collimator consisting of a blue-detuned cylindrical-hollow (doughnut) laser beam. Cold atoms from a magneto-optical trap are loaded into the doughnut beam and guided in the propagation direction of the doughnut beam. The cold atoms experience efficient Sisyphus cooling induced by the doughnut beam and a weak repumping beam and are collimated in the transverse direction. In the longitudinal direction the cold atoms experience small accelerations that are due to the absorption-induced heating of the doughnut beam and the repumping beam. The cooling, heating, and loss mechanisms in this atomic collimator are analyzed. Our study shows that an intense cold atomic beam with a minimum transverse velocity of ∼2 cm s-1 (a minimum transverse temperature of ∼1.4 μK) and a brightness of approximately 2×1013 atoms (sr-1 cm-2 s-1) can be obtained from the collimator.
We report on the transverse laser cooling of a magnetically guided beam of ultracold chromium atoms. Radial compression by a tapering of the guide is employed to adiabatically heat the beam. Inside the tapered section, heat is extracted from the atom beam by a two-dimensional (2D) optical molasses perpendicular to it, resulting in a significant increase in atomic phase space density. A magnetic offset field is applied to prevent optical pumping to untrapped states. Our results demonstrate that, by a suitable choice of the magnetic offset field, the cooling beam intensity and detuning, atom losses and longitudinal heating can be avoided. Final temperatures below 65 μK have been achieved, corresponding to an increase in phase space density in the guided beam by more than a factor of 30.
The realisation of cold and slow atomic beams has opened the way to a series of precision measurements of high scientific interest, as atom interferometry, Bose-Einstein Condensation and atomic fountain clocks. The latter are used since several years as reference clocks, given the high performance that they can reach both in accuracy and stability. The common philosophy in the construction of atomic fountains has been the pulsed technique, where an atoms sample is launched vertically and then falls down under the effect of the gravity. The Observatoire de Neuchâtel had a different approach and has built a fountain clock (FOCS1) operating in a continuous mode. This technique offers two main advantages: the diminution of the undesirable effects due to the atomic density (e.g. collisions between the atoms and cavity pulling) and to the noise of the local oscillator (intermodulation effect). To take full advantage of the continuous fountain approach however, we need to increase the atomic flux. The techniques chosen to reach this goal are an efficient transverse collimation together with more atoms to begin with. Here we report on a study of different transverse collimation techniques performed in a two-dimensional phase stable optical lattice (namely gray molasses and magnetically induced laser cooling) as well as the development and characterisation of a 2D-magneto-optical trap used to load the fountain. Best performances are reached in a 2D+-MOT configuration of such a pre-source, for which we detect an atomic flux 20 times greater than the one measured when the fountain is loaded by a Cs vapour. This gain could improve the atomic clock stability by a factor 6. An even better stability is expected after introducing a pre-cooling stage before performing the transverse collimation. This new configuration is currently under investigation and will be implemented in a second continuous fountain (FOCS2).
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We report a new cooling scheme used to actively collimate an atomic beam of 85Rb^{85}\mathrm{Rb}85Rb with one-dimensional optical molasses. The atoms' transverse velocity is damped by a standing wave of circularly polarized light in a magnetic field of \ensuremath{\sim}20 \ensuremath{\mu}T to 2 cm/s (rms), well below the Doppler velocity vD{v}_{D}vD​=(7\ensuremath{\Elzxh}\ensuremath{\gamma}/20M)1/2{)}^{1/2})1/2\ensuremath{\sim}10 cm/s for one-dimensional optical molasses. The minimum measured velocity is limited only by the experimental geometry. We have developed a model in which the mixing by the field and optical pumping combine to form a cycle that cools below the Doppler limit, in agreement with our measurements.