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

Cooling atoms in dark gravitational laser traps

Yu. B. Ovchinnikov, Johannes Söding, Rudolf Grimm

Published May 6, 1996• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a trap based on an evanescent light wave which is formed on the surface of a conical or a pyramidal cavity in a glass substrate. The far blue-detuned evanescent wave acts as a mirror for atoms, bouncing on it in the gravitational field. In addition, fast and deep Sisyphus cooling in the evanescent wave can be organized for alkali atoms. This leads to the cooling of the atoms down to the recoil-limited temperature and their collection in the field- free region near the bottom of the trap, to form an atomic gas of extremely high density.

DOI
10.1117/12.239872

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•Oct 8, 2004•1 citation
We propose a trap based on an evanescent light wave which is formed on the surface of a conical or a pyramidal cavity in a glass substrate. The far blue-detuned evanescent wave acts as a mirror for atoms, bouncing on it in the gravitational field. In addition, fast and deep Sisyphus cooling in the evanescent wave can be organized for alkali atoms. This leads to the cooling of the atoms down to the recoil-limited temperature and their collection in the field- free region near the bottom of the trap, to form an atomic gas of extremely high density.
We propose a dark gravito-optical dipole trap, for alkali atoms, consisting of a blue-detuned, pyramidal-hollow laser beam propagating upward and the gravity field. When cold atoms from a magneto-optical trap are loaded into the pyramidal-hollow beam and bounce inside the pyramidal-hollow beam, they experience efficient Sisyphus cooling and geometric cooling induced by the pyramidal-hollow beam and the weak repumping beam propagating downward. Our study shows that an ultracold and dense atomic sample with an equilibrium 3D momentum of � 3 ¯ and an atomic density above the point of Bose-Einstein condensation may be obtained in this pure optical trap. PACC: 3280P; 3380P; 4250
We discuss our recent experimental demonstrations of three novel atom traps which are all based on the optical dipole force in far-detuned laser light. In the gravito-optical surface trap (GOST), Cs atoms are trapped and cooled by means of an evanescent-wave mirror very closely above a dielectric surface. This trap allows for optical cooling at very high densities and provides good starting conditions for evaporative cooling to quantum degeneracy and the realization of a 2D quantum gas. The conical atom trap (CAT) uses a hollow blue-detuned laser beam in combination with gravity to trap atoms in a dark spatial region. This trap is experimentally simple and provides high loading efficiency, tight confinement, efficient sub-Doppler cooling, and strong suppression of collisional losses. The standing-wave red-detuned (STAR) trap allows one to confine atoms in a shallow optical potential at a very low photon scattering rate, and is thus an interesting tool for studies of the atomic ground-state dynamics in external electro-magnetic fields. We have studied atomic spin polarization in this trap.
Summary form only given. The gravito-optical surface trap (GOST) confines cesium atoms by a blue-detuned repulsive evanescent wave (EW) in combination with gravity. Horizontal confinement is provided by the conservative optical dipole potential of a hollow, cylindrical laser beam, far blue-detuned from resonance. For preparing a very cold and dense cesium gas in the GOST, we use evanescent wave 'Sisyphus' cooling, which is based on inelastic reflections of the atoms from the EW. Using this method we have obtained a temperature of 3 /spl mu/K, which corresponds to an average distance of the atoms from the surface of 19 /spl mu/m. As a very important feature for attaining very high densities, EW cooling allows one to keep the atoms predominantly in the absolute ground state, thus avoiding trap loss by light assisted collisions.
We have designed a gravitational cavity for ultra-cold atoms using an atomic mirror made from an evanescent laser wave.By a temporal variation of the evanescent wave intensity, we have realized various atom optics components such as temporal slits and phase modulators.We have also designed an atom interferometer using this cavity which proves that the coherence of the de Broglie waves can be preserved during the bounce of the atoms on the mirror.Finally we show that an efficient cooling of the atoms inside the cavity can be achieved using a Sisyphus process during the bounce.
During the past two decades the dramatic developments in cooling and trapping of gaseous atomic samples has produced a variety of techniques to manipulate the external and internal atomic states with electromagnetic fields. The research efforts so far have mainly focused on studying the fundamental aspects of modern quantum physics, although numerous practical applications, e.g., in integrated matter-wave optics and quantum information processing, are expected to soon be added to the already established atom-optics products, such as atomic clocks and acceleration sensors. One of the most promising foundations for the practical applications of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and coherent matter waves is the technology based on the creation of microscopic atom traps on the surface of a solid substrate. This trapping technique has recently been used to successfully control the motion of microscopic atomic samples and to significantly simplify the creation of BEC.\n\nThe main research topic of this thesis is the development and design of surface-mounted atom traps on transparent dielectric substrates. Such traps could provide an extra flexibility and stability for the experiments, since they would allow unimpeded control of atoms with laser light and provide reduction of magnetic-field fluctuations associated with the thermal motion of free electrons in the substrate material. The thesis describes several novel approaches to the creation of such surface traps by superimposing repulsive evanescent optical waves with strongly localized magnetic or electric fields. These fields can be produced by either conductive or permanently magnetized, optically transparent patterns imprinted in a thin layer on a transparent dielectric substrate. The evanescent wave can also be used to cool the atoms in a gravitational field before loading them into the microtrap. The lateral confinement of the atoms on the evanescent wave can be realized with a thin-walled hollow laser beam, the creation of which is demonstrated in the thesis. The thesis also describes certain general aspects concerning evanescent-wave cooling. In particular, the influence that multiple reabsorption of resonance-frequency photons in a cloud of evanescent-wave cooled atoms has on the cooling efficiency is investigated. Also, a theoretical model based on classical statistical mechanics and thermodynamics is introduced to show how a microtrap on an evanescent-wave mirror can be used to decrease the temperature, increase the phase-space density, and provide temperature conserving spin-polarization of the atoms.