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Physical Review A

Atomic diffraction assisted by a stimulated Raman transition

Carsten Henkel, Klaus Mølmer, Robin Kaiser, Christoph Ira Westbrook

Published Jul 1, 1997• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that internal state transitions may induce energy transfer among different directions of motion and lead efficiently to large scattering angles in atomic reflection from evanescent-wave mirrors. The proposed scattering mechanism is reminiscent of the so-called Sisyphus effect of laser cooling. Perturbative calculations are presented and discussed for the diffraction of atomic beams at grazing incidence on evanescent fields with polarization gradients and for the reflection of atoms by a rough mirror.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.56.r9

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AIP conference proceedings•Jan 1, 2008•0 citations
We show that internal state transitions may induce energy transfer among different directions of motion and lead efficiently to large scattering angles in atomic reflection from evanescent-wave mirrors. The proposed scattering mechanism is reminiscent of the so-called Sisyphus effect of laser cooling. Perturbative calculations are presented and discussed for the diffraction of atomic beams at grazing incidence on evanescent fields with polarization gradients and for the reflection of atoms by a rough mirror.
We investigate both theoretically and experimentally an elementary Sisyphus process occurring during the reflection of an atom onto a laser evanescent wave propagating at the surface of a dielectric prism. Cesium atoms bouncing at normal incidence may undergo a spontaneous Raman transition between their two hyperfine levels; this leads to an efficient cooling since those levels are light shifted by a different amount by the laser-atom interaction thanks to the large hyperfine splitting. We compare the measured final energy distributions after the bounce with Monte Carlo simulations. A quantitative agreement is obtained when the van der Waals interaction between the cesium atoms and the dielectric prism is taken into account. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
In the reflection of atoms by evanescent wave the amplitude of the light field can be changed not necessarily adiabatically slow in comparison with relaxation of internal atomic motion. An approach to describe the reflection of atoms by evanescent wave is the dressed state picture. An atomic mirror can be formed also by a focused elliptical laser beam, in which atoms intersect near the waist of the laser beam. A simple evanescent wave allows one to create a high homogeneous field along the surface of an atomic mirror, without a limitation on the intensity of the field in an evanescent wave. The size of an atomic mirror is usually restricted by the laser intensity required by the reflection. There are several processes at the reflection of atom by light which could lead to non ideal properties of the mirror. One of the remarkable properties of an atomic mirror is its ability to reflect atoms in a certain quantum state.
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 present a theoretical analysis of the influence of surface roughness on the atomic reflection from an evanescent wave mirror. In our calculations we assume that light scattered at the rough dielectric surface interferes with the evanescent wave, creating a rough potential that scatters the atoms. We calculate the probability of diffuse reflection and the momentum distribution of the scattered atoms with a statistical model for the rough surface. The atomic reflection is diffuse rather than specular if the surface roughness is comparable to the wavelength of the incident atoms. We discuss the spatial coherence of the reflected matter waves. We indicate how to generalize our treatment to the case of multilevel atoms.
A research project at the “Laboratoire d’électronique quantique” consists in a theoretical study of the reflection and diffraction phenomena via an atomic mirror. This poster presents the principle of an atomic mirror. Many groups in the world have constructed this type of atom optics experiments such as in Paris‐Orsay‐Villetaneuse (France), Stanford‐Gaithersburg (USA), Munich‐Heidelberg (Germany), etc. A laser beam goes into a prism with an incidence bigger than the critical incidence. It undergoes a total reflection on the plane face of the prism and then exits. The transmitted resulting wave out of the prism is evanescent and repulsive as the frequency detuning of the laser beam compared to the atomic transition δ = ωL−ω0 is positive. The cold atomic sample interacts with this evanescent wave and undergoes one or more elastic bounces by passing into backward points in its trajectory because the atoms’ kinetic energy (of the order of the μeV) is less than the maximum of the dipolar potential barrier ℏΩ2/Δ where Ω is the Rabi frequency [1]. In fact, the atoms are cooled and captured in a magneto‐optical trap placed at a distance of the order of the cm above the prism surface. The dipolar potential with which interact the slow atoms is obtained for a two level atom in a case of a dipolar electric transition (D2 Rubidium transition at a wavelength of 780nm delivered by a Titane‐Saphir laser between a fundamental state Jf = l/2 and an excited state Je = 3/2). This potential is corrected by an attractive Van der Waals term which varies as 1/z3 in the Lennard‐Jones approximation (typical atomic distance of the order of λ0/2π where λ0 is the laser wavelength) and in 1/z4 if the distance between the atom and its image in the dielectric is big in front of λ0/2π. This last case is obtained in a quantum electrodynamic calculation by taking into account an orthornormal base [2]. We’ll examine the role of spontaneous emission for which the rate is inversely proportional to the detuning δ and is responsible of the non specular aspect of the atomic reflection (atomic diffusion). In the contrary, we note that the specularity of the reflection preserve the coherence of the atomic wave packet. The atoms will constitute a probe of the rugosity of the prism surface which can be imperfect or super‐polished.