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

Laser trapping of trace amounts of radioactive atoms

Gene D. Sprouse, Luis A. Orozco, J. A. Behr, A. Ghosh, G. Gwinner, J. E. Simsarian, P. A. Voytas, F. R. Xu

Published Apr 7, 1995• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Small samples of radioactive atoms can now be concentrated with magneto- optic laser traps into a very small space and cooled to microdegree temperatures. The first application of these new techniques to atoms with radioactive nuclei offers new possibilities for nuclear physics measurements. The general applicability of these techniques of minute quantities of other materials is discussed.

DOI
10.1117/12.206448

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Small samples of radioactive atoms can now be concentrated with magneto- optic laser traps into a very small space and cooled to microdegree temperatures. The first application of these new techniques to atoms with radioactive nuclei offers new possibilities for nuclear physics measurements. The general applicability of these techniques of minute quantities of other materials is discussed.
The capability of manipulating neutral atoms with the force of resonant scattered laser light is being exploited in several different areas of research. The author discusses applications in particle and nuclear physics by expediting some measurements of the subtle effects of the fundamental weak interaction in atoms and nuclei. It was shown in two recent experiments that it is possible to efficiently cool accelerator produced short-lived isotopes and load them into magneto-optic traps. These demonstrations open up new possibilities for obtaining the required precision in experiments involving rare radioactive isotopes.
Laser cooling and trapping techniques made possible during the last two decades important achievements in the atomic physics and quantum mechanics fields. These same techniques can be usefully applied to radioactive atoms by opening new fields of investigations. Nuclear processes can be studied with the atomic physics tools. We focused our attention on Francium radioactive atoms. A magneto-optical trap has been set up at the INFN Legnaro laboratories. Preliminary tests with other stable alkali atoms aimed at an improvement of the MOT collection efficiency are reported. Fast and efficient trap loading of rubidium has been obtained through the light-induced atomic desorption from an organic coating. A larger number of sodium atoms, as compared to monochromatic trapping laser, has been trapped by using a broad-band laser.
Summary form only given. Techniques for cooling and trapping atoms now provide unique capabilities for the manipulation of atoms. In particular, they make possible very low temperatures, extraordinarily high atomic phase space densities, and long perturbation-free observation times. These capabilities enable one to carry out many new measurements on atoms with great precision and/or in entirely new regimes of temperature and density. This tutorial will concentrate primarily on the practical aspects of how to apply current laser cooling and trapping techniques. This will include descriptions of the various techniques and their capabilities, as well as a discussion of tradeoffs between price, complexity, and various performance parameters. Finally, I will briefly discuss how these techniques are applied in a number of specific cases including cold collisions, precision measurements including atomic clocks, atom interferometry, collecting radioactive isotopes, and the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates.
The use of an optical trap for the quantitative detection of small numbers of radioactive atoms is featured. Presently under construction is a system consisting of a high-efficiency magneto-optical trap (MOT) coupled to a mass separator. Mass-separated samples will be implanted into a thin platinum foil, subsequently released from the foil by heating, and resonantly trapped in the MOT. The number of atoms in the trap will be quantitatively deduced from the amplitude of the fluorescence signal. Measurements for different isotopes are planned by appropriately shifting the trapping and repumping laser frequencies of the optical trap. Our initial investigations will concentrate on the determination of trace amounts of 135Cs and 137Cs.
We are attempting to produce an atomic vapor that is so cold that the de Broglie wavelength is larger than the interparticle spacing. This is the condition needed to obtain Bose-Einstein condensation of a noninteracting gas. Our approach is to optically trap and cool atomic cesium and then load it into a purely magnetic trap for further cooling. In the course of this work we have investigated a number of magnetic traps and very low temperature collisions that are relevant to the success of this approach. In other work we are developing optical trapping techniques for the efficient collection of radioactive alkali isotopes. This work is aimed at measuring parity violation in these isotopes and thereby stringently testing the standard model of elementary particle physics. We have studied how to optimize the capture efficiency of atoms in an atomic vapor. We are currently developing cells that will allow the atoms to bounce off the walls until they are captured in the optical trap. The efficiency of this capture scheme will be discussed.
The forces felt by atoms when illuminated with resonant radiation can reduce their velocity dispersion and confine them in a region of space for further probing and experimentation. The forces can be dissipative or conservative and allow manipulations of the external degrees of freedom of atoms and small neutral particles. Laser cooling and trapping is now an important tool for many spectroscopic studies. It enhances the density of atoms in phase space by many orders of magnitude reducing the need of large samples. These lecture notes review the fundamental principles of the field and show some of the applications to the study of the spectroscopy of radioactive atoms. 1