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Physical Review A

Alternative method to control radiative vortex forces in a magneto-optical trap

Krzysztof Kiersnowski, Tomasz Kawalec, T. Dohnalik

Published Jun 1, 2006• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present an experimental and theoretical study of controlling the atomic spatial distributions in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). With a diaphragm we can vary the waist and power of one of the cooling laser beams and we can change parameters of large-diameter, parallelogram-shaped atomic orbits. We show that the radiative force generated by the repumping MOT laser has to be taken into consideration. Computer simulations of atomic trajectories explain the observed spatial structures, and we employ these simulations to present potential applications of controlling the diaphragm diameter as a function of time. A potential use of controlled vortex forces seems to have a great significance in recently presented important new methods to investigate cold atom collisions in the MOT, which were recently published.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.73.065401

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We present an experimental and theoretical study of controlling the atomic spatial distributions in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). With a diaphragm we can vary the waist and power of one of the cooling laser beams and we can change parameters of large-diameter, parallelogram-shaped atomic orbits. We show that the radiative force generated by the repumping MOT laser has to be taken into consideration. Computer simulations of atomic trajectories explain the observed spatial structures, and we employ these simulations to present potential applications of controlling the diaphragm diameter as a function of time. A potential use of controlled vortex forces seems to have a great significance in recently presented important new methods to investigate cold atom collisions in the MOT, which were recently published.
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We have successfully trapped sp7\\sp7sp7Li in a vapor cell magneto-optical trap (MOT). The trap is studied in detail and the parameters are measured from the experiment. The trapping mechanism has been understood in terms of the radiation force and a simple one dimensional model is used in interpreting and predicting the experimental results. The cold-cold atom collision rate coefficient is measured in a beam MOT. The two collision mechanisms, fine structure changing and radiative escape, are discussed in a molecular picture. One of the channels, the fine structure changing channel, can be turned on and off by the experimental conditions, namely the laser intensity in this experiment. The rate coefficient for each mechanism has been determined from the experiment.
The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of the vertical guiding laser beam waist on cold atom guiding efficiency. In this study, a double magneto-optical trap (MOT) apparatus is used. With an unbalanced force in the horizontal direction, a cold atomic beam is generated by the first MOT. The cold atoms enter the second chamber and are then re-trapped and cooled by the second MOT. By releasing a second atom cloud, the process of transferring the cold atoms from MOT to the dipole trap, which is formed by a red-detuned converged 1064-nm laser, is experimentally demonstrated. And after releasing for 20 ms, the atom cloud is guided to a distance of approximately 3 mm. As indicated by the results, the guiding efficiency depends strongly on the laser beam waist; the efficiency reaches a maximum when the waist radius (w0) of the laser is in the range of 15 to 25 μm, while the initial atom cloud has a radius of 133 μm. Additionally, the properties of the atoms inside the dipole potential trap, such as the distribution profile and lifetime, are deduced from the fluorescence images.
Since the first proposal and the first experiment on magneto-optical trapping of atoms, magneto-optical traps (MOT) became the most popular traps for cold atoms. Despite the numerous successful applications of MOT it is still unclear what ultimate parameters could be expected for atoms trapped in MOT. We develop the theory of MOT for cold atoms under the multilevel dipole interaction schemes. Theory is based on consideration of one-dimensional motion of atoms which have three ground-state sublevels (F/sub g/=1) and five upper-state sublevels (F/sub e/=2) and are in inhomogeneous magnetic field and in the field of two counter-propagating circular polarized laser waves. It is shown that in multilevel interaction schemes two-photon processes are responsible for formation of a narrow velocity and spatial structure in the radiation force. It is found that two-photon coherent process enhances considerably the friction force and the oscillation frequency at negative detuning. Single-photon and two-photon processes are shown to produce the two-component structure of the MOT potential and accordingly the two-component coordinate distribution.
We study a novel repumping transition for 88^{88}88Sr atoms trapped in a 'blue' magneto-optical trap. We show that, while the repumping efficiency is about three orders of magnitude smaller than for traditional schemes, it is sufficient for recycling all atoms, provided the repumping laser beams are arranged to form a 'green' magneto- optical trap (MOT) helping to cool and confine the atoms and preventing their loss. Our main findings are: (i) that the green MOT configuration is able to trap 10 times more atoms in the blue MOT than using the green transition merely as a repump, and (ii) that the atom numbers in the two-color MOT can be balanced through experimental control parameters. The interest of this scheme lies in its capability of reaching low temperature and its suitability for continuous atomic beam generation.
In this thesis we present a detailed experimental investigation of size- and densityscaling laws for large Magneto-Optical Traps (MOT) with up to 10^10 atoms. It is well known that laser-induced interactions, produced by multiple scattering, is the main limitation to spatial densities in a MOT. We therefore realized a ?Dark MOT? combined with a Dipole-Trap. Thus, the repulsions were considerably lower and an increase by two factor of magnitude (up to 10^12 atm/cm^3) has been observed. We also propose a qualitative model for the density (and thus for the size), which introduces the mechanical interactions induced by the repumper photons when its optical thickness becomes important. This work is part of the research project to observe Anderson localization of light in cold atoms, where densities of the order of (10^13 - 10^14 atm/cm^3) are required. For densities lower than this critical value gain mechanisms could be useful to amplify prelocalized modes. We thus implemented a pump-probe technique suitable for gain production in the atomic sample. In our case, we have been naturally lead to a Four-Wave Mixing (FWM) configuration. A detailed analysis of the properties and characteristics of FWM-signal has been presented, with, in particularly, a clear red-blue asymmetry of FWM-spectrum for high intensities of the pump beams. We explained this asymmetry by the spatial bunching of the atoms in the nodes or antinodes of the strong standing wave of the pump beams.