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Physical Review A

Laser cooling of rubidium atoms from background vapor in diffuse light

Hua-Dong Cheng, Wenzhuo Zhang, Hongyu Ma, Liang Liu, Yuzhu Wang

Published Feb 5, 2009• 38 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper we describe an experiment on laser cooling of $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms directly from a vapor background in diffuse light. Diffuse light is produced in a ceramic integrating sphere by multiple scattering of two laser beams injected through multimode fibers. A probe beam, whose propagation direction is either horizontal or vertical, is used to detect cold atoms. We measured the absorption spectra of the cold atoms by scanning the frequency of the probe beam, and observed both the absorption signal and the time of flight signal after we switched off the cooling light, from which we estimated the temperature and the number of cold atoms. This method is clearly attractive for building a compact cold atom clock.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.79.023407

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In this paper we describe an experiment on laser cooling of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms directly from a vapor background in diffuse light. Diffuse light is produced in a ceramic integrating sphere by multiple scattering of two laser beams injected through multimode fibers. A probe beam, whose propagation direction is either horizontal or vertical, is used to detect cold atoms. We measured the absorption spectra of the cold atoms by scanning the frequency of the probe beam, and observed both the absorption signal and the time of flight signal after we switched off the cooling light, from which we estimated the temperature and the number of cold atoms. This method is clearly attractive for building a compact cold atom clock.
We demonstrate experimentally the generation of one-dimensional cold gases of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms by diffuse laser cooling. A horizontal slender vacuum glass tube with a length of 105 cm and diameter of 2 cm is used in our experiment. The diffuse laser light inside the tube, which is generated by multireflection of injected lasers, cools the background vapor atoms. With 250 mW of cooling light and 50 mW of repumping light, an evenly distributed 1-m-long profile of cold atom cloud is obtained. We observe a factor 4 improvement in the atomic optical density for a typical cooling duration of 170 ms and a sub-Doppler atomic temperature of 25 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$. The central number of detected cold atoms remains constant for a free-fall duration of 30 ms. Such samples are ideal for many quantum optical experiments involving electromagnetically induced transparency, electronically highly excited (Rydberg) atoms, and quantum precision measurements.
In this paper we describe an experiment of efficient cooling of 87^{87}87Rb atoms in two-frequency diffuse laser lights. Compared with single frequency diffuse light, two-frequency diffuse lights have wider velocity capture range and thus can cool more atoms. In our experiment, the maximum number of cooled atoms can reach up to 3.9×1093.9\times10^93.9×109. Such a result is quite useful in building a compact cold atom clock.
We present a scheme for a compact rubidium cold-atom clock which performs diffuse light cooling, microwave interrogation, and detection of the clock signal in a cylindrical microwave cavity. The diffuse light is produced by laser light reflection at the inner surface of the microwave cavity. The pattern of the injected laser beams is specially designed to accumulate the majority of the cold atoms in the center of the microwave cavity. Microwave interrogation of the cold atoms in the cavity leads to Ramsey fringes, which have a linewidth of 24.524.524.5 Hz with a contrast of 95.695.6%95.6 when the free evolution time is 20 ms. Recently, a frequency stability of $7.3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}13}\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}$ has been achieved. The scheme of this physical package can largely reduce the cold-atom clock complexity and increase clock performance.