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Physical Review Letters

Two-Photon Spectroscopy of Trapped Atomic Hydrogen

Claudio Lenz Cesar, Dale G. Fried, T. C. Killian, A. Polcyn, Jon C. Sandberg, Ite A. Yu, Thomas J. Greytak, Daniel Kleppner, John M. Doyle

Published Jul 8, 1996• 169 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report observation of the 1S-2S two-photon transition in hydrogen confined in a magnetic trap at submillikelvin temperatures. The excitation spectrum can display a sharp central feature arising from periodic motion of the trapped atoms. The metastable 2S atoms remain trapped, and have a lifetime close to the natural lifetime of 122 ms. These developments open the way to achieving the transition's natural linewidth. We have also demonstrated that the temperature of the gas can be determined from the line shape, providing an important tool for the study of cold trapped hydrogen. The resolution in these experiments appears to be limited by laser stability, currently 3 kHz.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.77.255

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We report observation of the 1S-2S two-photon transition in hydrogen confined in a magnetic trap at submillikelvin temperatures. The excitation spectrum can display a sharp central feature arising from periodic motion of the trapped atoms. The metastable 2S atoms remain trapped, and have a lifetime close to the natural lifetime of 122 ms. These developments open the way to achieving the transition's natural linewidth. We have also demonstrated that the temperature of the gas can be determined from the line shape, providing an important tool for the study of cold trapped hydrogen. The resolution in these experiments appears to be limited by laser stability, currently 3 kHz.
Atomic hydrogen has been loaded into a 1-K deep magnetic trap through the use of a dilution refrigerator. Evaporative cooling has been used to cool the trapped hydrogen into the submillikelvin temperature regime. These techniques have produced a sample with density of 8 × 1013 cm-3 at a temperature of 100 μK. At this density a transition to a Bose-Einstein condensate is predicted to occur at a temperature of 30 μK. These results have been obtained with a magnetic trap that has been constructed to accommodate upcoming experiments based on laser spectroscopy of the 1S-2S two photon transition in the trapped hydrogen. A frequency doubled narrow linewidth cw dye laser system has been constructed to excite the 1S-2S transition. The excitation will be detected by the observation of electric field-induced Lyman-alpha fluorescence. The optical detection system should yield improved sample density and temperature diagnostic capabilities that will facilitate a closer approach to the quantum degenerate regime. Additionally the cold, confined hydrogen gas offers the possibility of improving the level of resolution of Doppler-free hydrogen 1S-2S laser spectroscopy by several orders of magnitude.
The authors report the observation of the 1S-2S two-photon transition in atomic hydrogen in an atomic beam, excited by light from a narrow-band continuous-wave laser. The excitation takes place in a collision-free environment and detection of the resonance is carried out by Stark-quenching the metastable atoms some distance from the interaction region. This approach removes the limitations of cell excitation employed in previous experiments with continuous-wave lasers, and should allow the full precision of modern tunable laser techniques to be applied to the 1S-2S transition. It also gives a new method for producing a collimated beam of metastable atoms which has particular applications to a variety of future experiments with cold hydrogen.
We report on the first results with resonance enhanced two-photon spectroscopy of magnetically trapped atomic hydrogen, exciting the transition from the 1S1S1S ground state to the 3S3S3S or the 3D3D3D state. The spectroscopic method introduces tunable transparency to resonant optical studies of cold dense gases. It combines sensitivity (due to the near resonant 2P2P2P state) with high resolution (in principle limited only by the 3S3S3S state lifetime), making it a precision tool for optical investigation of ultracold H gas. To demonstrate its potential, the dynamic evolution of H gas during evaporative cooling is quantitatively investigated by analysis of two-photon absorption spectra.
Because of its simple structure, the hydrogen atom is often used as a testbed for quantum electrodynamics. Spectroscopy of trapped atomic samples can greatly improve the accuracy of these tests. Trapping atomic hydrogen in an optical dipole trap or an optical lattice has never been achieved. Only trapping in magnetic fields that lead to large Zeeman shifts has been demonstrated. Standard techniques of atomic physics are difficult to apply to atomic hydrogen. The small mass of the atom and the large photon energy of the 1S-2P cooling transition significantly complicate Doppler cooling. This proposal introduces a photon recoil-assisted loading scheme that uses these properties to our advantage to load atomic hydrogen into an optical dipole trap without laser cooling. The magic wavelength (515 nm) for the 1S-2S clock transition (1.3-Hz natural linewidth) is easily accessible with current laser technology. Since the 1S-2S clock transition can be driven Doppler free, we do not require a very low temperature. Besides improving spectroscopy for fundamental science, such a system can also be used as a “computable” atomic clock that may one day justify the redefinition of the SI second in terms of the Rydberg constant.
We study the magic wavelength for two-photon 1S–nS transitions in a hydrogen and deuterium atom, as well as 2S–nS transitions, where the lower level is the metastable 2S state. At the magic wavelength, the dynamic Stark shifts of the ground and the excited state of the transition coincide, so that the transition frequency is independent of the intensity of the trapping laser field. Experimentally feasible magic wavelengths of transitions with small slopes in the atomic polarizabilities are determined; these are the most stable magic wavelengths against variations of the laser frequency. We provide data for the magic wavelengths for the 1S–nS and 2S–nS transitions in hydrogen and deuterium, with n=2,⋯,8. We also analyze the stability of the elimination of the ac Stark shift at the magic wavelength against tiny variations of the trapping laser frequency from the magic value.
Abstract : Research on this AASERT grant was focussed on the optical spectroscopy of trapped cold hydrogen for use as a spectroscopic tool and as a means of studying the gas. The grant supported research by two graduate students. During the grant an optical signal on the 1S - 2S transition in cold trapped hydrogen was observed, opening the way to a new form of ultra high resolution spectroscopy. The optical signal will also provide a valuable tool for manipulating a Bose condensate in hydrogen. The condensate can absorb two photons form a single running wave. The recoil is enough to sweep the atoms out of the trap, creating a new type of atom laser beam.