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Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Cooling cesium atoms in a Talbot lattice

C. Mennerat-Robilliard, Denis Boiron, J. M Fournier, Ashod Aradian, Péter Horák, G. Grynberg

Published Nov 15, 1998• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Three-dimensional cooling of cesium atoms is observed in the lin ⊥ lin configuration when one beam is transmitted through a periodic phase grating. Localization in Talbot planes is observed with a CCD camera. An unusual dependence of the temperature on the optical pumping rate is found and explained with a simple physical model. The results are confirmed by semiclassical Monte Carlo simulations.

DOI
10.1209/epl/i1998-00491-5

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•Jan 1, 2002•0 citations
Three-dimensional cooling of cesium atoms is observed in the lin ⊥ lin configuration when one beam is transmitted through a periodic phase grating. Localization in Talbot planes is observed with a CCD camera. An unusual dependence of the temperature on the optical pumping rate is found and explained with a simple physical model. The results are confirmed by semiclassical Monte Carlo simulations.
We present an experimental investigation of a three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice where the light polarization is linear at the bottom of the potential wells instead of being circular as in previous studies. In the present situation, optical pumping induces frequent transitions between differently light-shifted Zeeman sublevels (jumping regime). However, narrow vibrational lines are still observed as a result from a motional narrowing-like phenomenon taking place in this lattice. The atomic kinetic temperature is investigated and shown to be lower than in a standard 3D lin ⊥ lin optical lattice.
We report the results of an experimental study on the interaction of cooled cesium atoms with the optical field of two standing waves having different wavelengths (852 and 894 nm) and opposite circular polarizations. The spatial modulation of the superposition of the two optical potentials and the polarization properties of this configuration are expected to produce cooling of the atoms and a spatial modulation of their density with the periodicity of the beat of the two wavelengths. We performed temperature measurements of the cesium sample and observed the density distribution of the atoms for several configurations of the standing wave by means of time-of-flight absorption imaging and fluorescence imaging techniques. Experimentally we could not observe a pronounced density modulation on the length scale of the superperiod. Reasons for this are revealed by a one-dimensional numerical simulation including the complexity of the full Zeeman structure of the cesium atoms. That simulation reproduces the experimental results for the temperatures and spatial confinement.
We present a method for creating three-dimensional optical lattices starting from well-known one-dimensional configurations. This method is applied to the case of the lin ⊥ lin molasses and gives rise to optical potentials having orthorhombic symmetry. The vibrational frequencies of cesium atoms in these optical potentials are measured and found to be in good agreement with theoretical predictions. The experiment also shows that the localisation of atoms in the lowest bound levels involves relaxation times which can be as large as 30 ms.
This dissertation reports on quantum state preparation of cesium atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice, by resolved-sideband Raman cooling. An optical lattice is a periodic potential produced by the light shift interaction between an atom and light field. Laser cooled atoms can become strongly localized about the bottom of potential wells in an optical lattice, where they occupy a discrete spectrum of bound vibrational energy levels. The distribution over vibrational levels of atoms in the lattice is characterized by the mean vibrational excitation, n . In an optical lattice, absorption and emission of photons from lattice beams causes n to increase in time. This source of heating is always present, but its rate can be greatly reduced in a lattice detuned far from the atomic resonance. Sideband cooling is an efficient means of transferring atoms from higher into lower-lying vibrational levels and, thus, it reduces n for the ensemble. If the sideband cooling rate is much greater than the heating rate, then n approaches zero and virtually all atoms are in the lowest vibrational level in their potential wells. Our sideband cooling scheme involves stimulated Raman transitions between bound states in the potential wells of a pair of magnetic sublevels, followed by optical pumping, for a net loss of one quantum of vibration per cooling cycle. The process accumulates 98% of atoms in the ground vibrational level of a potential well associated with a single Zeeman substate. Each atom in the lattice is then very close to a pure state. For two-dimensional lattice with sideband cooling we find nx≈ny≈0.008 &parl0;16&parr0; . Various issues related to state preparation and sideband cooling are also discussed in the context of a one dimensional lin ⊥ lin optical lattice. These include improvement of laser cooling in a near resonance lattice by application of weak magnetic fields, transfer of atoms from near into far off-resonance lattices, and heating rates in far off-resonance lattices.
In a one-dimensional polarization-gradient cooling scheme, with two counter-propagating laser beams having mutually orthogonal linear polarization, a linear array of potential wells for cold atoms are formed. These optical potential wells are created by the spatially varying light shift of the atomic ground state. Transitions between quantized vibrational states in such wells have been observed by stimulated1 and spontaneous2 Raman spectroscopy. Recently, this was extended to three dimensions using both four beams3 and six beams.4 In this work, we intersect four travelling-wave laser beams, all polarized in the same plane, as indicated in Fig. 1. This produces a threedimensional body-centered cubic lattice of potential wells for cesium atoms. The laser wavelength is tuned 25 linewidths below the 62S1/2(F = 4) → 62P3/2(F = 5) transition at 852 nm; and the resultant lattice constants (distances between wells of the same character) are λ / 2 perpendicular to the plane of polarization, and λ × 2 in the plane of polarization.
A complete laser cooling setup was built, with focus on threedimensional near-resonant optical lattices for cesium. These consist of regularly ordered micropotentials, created by the interference of four laser beams. One key feature of optical lattices is an inherent ”Sisyphus cooling” process. It efficiently extracts kinetic energy from the atoms, leading to equilibrium temperatures of a few µK. The corresponding kinetic energy is lower than the depth of the potential wells, so that atoms can be trapped.We performed detailed studies of the cooling processes in optical lattices by using the time-of-flight and absorption-imaging techniques. We investigated the dependence of the equilibrium temperature on the optical lattice parameters, such as detuning, optical potential and lattice geometry. The presence of neighbouring transitions in the cesium hyperfine level structure was used to break symmetries in order to identify, which role “red” and “blue” transitions play in the cooling. We also examined the limits for the cooling process in optical lattices, and the possible difference in steady-state velocity distributions for different directions. Moreover, in collaboration with ´Ecole Normale Sup´erieure in Paris, numerical simulations were performed in order to get more insight in the cooling dynamics of optical lattices.Optical lattices can keep atoms almost perfectly isolated from the environment and have therefore been suggested as a platform for a host of possible experiments aimed at coherent quantum manipulations, such as spin-squeezing and the implementation of quantum logic-gates. We developed a novel way to trap two different cesium ground states in two distinct, interpenetrating optical lattices, and to change the distance between sites of one lattice relative to sites of the other lattice. This is a first step towards the implementation of quantum simulation schemes in optical lattices.