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Optics Letters

Enhanced loading of a two-color vapor-cell magneto-optical trap for sodium atoms

J.P. Flemming, Luís Gustavo Marcassa, R. J. Horowicz, Sérgio Carlos Zílio, Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato

Published Dec 15, 1995• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate enhanced loading of a vapor-cell magneto-optical trap for sodium atoms operating on a combination of atomic transitions, known in the literature as type I tuning, by using a second, nonoverlapping laser beam that captures atoms through a different combination of transitions (type II tuning). This two-color trap configuration has allowed us to achieve an ~10-fold improvement in the number and density of trapped atoms.

DOI
10.1364/ol.20.002529

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We demonstrate enhanced loading of a vapor-cell magneto-optical trap for sodium atoms operating on a combination of atomic transitions, known in the literature as type I tuning, by using a second, nonoverlapping laser beam that captures atoms through a different combination of transitions (type II tuning). This two-color trap configuration has allowed us to achieve an ~10-fold improvement in the number and density of trapped atoms.
We investigate the loading of a two-color vapor-cell magneto-optical trap for sodium atoms as a function of several operational parameters of the trap. We use two laser frequencies acting in different spatial regions to obtain either enhancement or inhibition of the capture mechanism. We demonstrate that the best enhancement is achieved when the trap operates on a combination of atomic transitions, known as type I tuning, by using a second laser beam to capture atoms through a different combination of transitions (type II tuning).
We report studies of photon-stimulated desorption, also known as light-induced atomic desorption, of sodium atoms from a vacuum-cell glass surface used for loading a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Fluorescence detection was used to record the trapped atom number and the desorption rate. We observed a steep wavelength dependence of the desorption process above 2.6eV2.6 \mathrm{eV}2.6eV photon energy, a result significant for estimations of sodium vapor density in the lunar atmosphere. Our data fit well to a simple model for the loading of the MOT dependent only on the sodium desorption rate and residual gas density. Up to $3.7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{7}$ Na atoms were confined under ultrahigh-vacuum conditions, creating promising loading conditions for a vapor-cell-based atomic Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium.
A novel method has been demonstrated for increasing the number of 85Rb trapped atoms in a vapor-cell magneto-optical trap. By using a second set of trapping laser beams overlapped with the original beams and detuned further from resonance, we obtained a doubling of the trap-filling rate as higher initial velocities were slowed. Blocking out the centers of these new beams and reducing the intensity in the original beams also allowed us to obtain a reduction in the light-induced loss rate. Overall we have obtained a fivefold increase in the number of trapped atoms. With 20-mm-diameter beams, ~1.4 × 109 atoms could be trapped. A Gaussian density profile with a peak density of ~2.2 × 1011 cm−3 was observed.
We present an experimental study to characterize a sodium vapor-cell magneto-optical trap (VCMOT) in terms of the number and density of trapped atoms, loading rate and load-ing time. We have investigated how these quantities change with the vapor temperature, magnetic- eld gradient and laser intensity. The results obtained are explained with a sim-ple model that employs the Doppler theory. Good agreement is obtained for most of the experimental data. Investigations on the size of the cloud as a function of the trap external parameters are also carried out. The information MOT in order to obtain the maximum presented here is useful in optimizing the number and density of trapped atoms, normally required for experiments of atomic collisions and Bose-Einstein condensation. I.
We demonstrate a novel dual color magneto—optical trap (MOT), which uses two sets of overlapping laser beams to cool and trap 87 Rb atoms. The volume of cold cloud in the dual color MOT is strongly dependent on the frequency difference of the laser beams and can be significantly larger than that in the normal MOT with single frequency MOT beams. Our experiment shows that the dual color MOT has the same loading rate as the normal MOT, but much longer loading time, leading to threefold increase in the number of trapped atoms. This indicates that the larger number is caused by reduced light induced loss. The dual color MOT is very useful in experiments where both high vacuum level and large atom number are required, such as single chamber quantum memory and Bose—Einstein condensation (BEC) experiments. Compared to the popular dark spontaneous-force optical trap (dark SPOT) technique, our approach is technically simpler and more suitable to low power laser systems.