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Physical Review A

Sisyphus cooling on the surface of a hollow-mirror atom trap

Hyunchul Nha, Wonho Jhe

Published Jul 1, 1997• 19 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the Sisyphus cooling of three-level atoms due to interaction with the evanescent field developed on the surface of a conical-hollow atom trap. We treat the total processes in a fully random way so that quantitative and realistic results are obtained by Monte Carlo simulation. We show that the trapped atoms, when released inside the hollow region, are cooled down to the final temperature of 30 $\ensuremath{\mu}$K, independent of the intial conditions, with negligible loss (about 1%) of the atoms. We also find that the mean height of the collected atoms is about 1 mm from the apex of the conical hollow with the trap radius of 0.5 mm. This system may be useful to realize an atomic funnel or a cold atomic beam for atom optical experiments such as atom interferometer and atom lithography.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.56.729

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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•May 6, 1996•0 citations
We investigate theoretically the Sisyphus cooling of three-level atoms due to interaction with the evanescent field developed on the surface of a conical-hollow atom trap. We treat the total processes in a fully random way so that quantitative and realistic results are obtained by Monte Carlo simulation. We show that the trapped atoms, when released inside the hollow region, are cooled down to the final temperature of 30 \ensuremathμ\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremathμK, independent of the intial conditions, with negligible loss (about 1%) of the atoms. We also find that the mean height of the collected atoms is about 1 mm from the apex of the conical hollow with the trap radius of 0.5 mm. This system may be useful to realize an atomic funnel or a cold atomic beam for atom optical experiments such as atom interferometer and atom lithography.
We propose an atomic funnel composed of an evanescent-light mirror produced in a conical hollow prism. The funneling of cold Rb atoms released from a magneto-optical trap is simulated in the scheme of the evanescent-light-induced Sisyphus cooling for compensating the heating by gravity. A geometric method of the conversion of a Gaussian light beam into a doughnut-shaped light beam suitable for the atomic funnel is also experimentally demonstrated by means of a double-cone prism. Under the assumption of a proper optical intensity distribution over the inner surface of a specific conical hollow prism, the Monte Carlo simulation including the van der Waals interaction shows that a half of the released Rb atoms can be collected and the mean temperature of the collected atoms is low enough for the application to be guided with a bent hollow optical fiber.
We propose an atomic funnel consisting of a dark hollow, divergent laser beam and an evanescent light in a short micron-sized hollow optical fiber. The cold atoms extracted from a magneto-optical trap experience effective Sisyphus cooling in the dark hollow beam. We calculate the potential barriers for atomic guiding in the evanescent light and the dark hollow beam, and analyze the atomic losses during the guiding and funneling process. Our results show that the equilibrium three-dimensional root-mean-square momentum of about $4.5\ensuremath{\Elzxh}k$ (temperature $\ensuremath{\sim}2.5\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$) and the funneling efficiency of about 95% could be obtained. A low-velocity, intense coherent atomic beam can be generated in this funnel scheme and its potential applications in atom optics are briefly discussed.
We study the cavity QED effects (modified decay rates and energy level shift) of an atom inside a cylindrical hollow fiber and outside a solid fiber using linear-response formalism. Next, we suggest the Sisyphus cooling process occurring inside the hollow fiber with blue-detuned evanescent wave and as a preliminary example, we show a Monte-Carlo simulation of the atoms in the conical hollow system. We also propose that the similar cooling process is expected in the dark hollow beam (doughnut beam) obtained from the hollow fiber of step index, which is more desirable than the case when atoms are inside the fiber since there is no attracting Van der Waals force.
We propose a trap scheme for cold alkali-metal atoms with an efficient intensity-gradient induced Sisyphus cooling in a weak standing-wave hollow-beam gravito-optical trap, which is composed of the interference of two well collimated, counterpropagating doughnut hollow beams with an intensity difference and a plug beam. We calculate the intensity distribution of the weak standing-wave hollow-beam field and its intensity gradient one, and find that such an optical dipole trap with an extremely high intensity gradient is desirable to realize an efficient intensity-gradient cooling for alkali-metal atoms in the trap. We also calculate the optical potentials, instantaneous dipole forces and spontaneous emission rates for a three-level dressed atom and study the dynamic process of intensity-gradient cooling of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms in the weak standing-wave hollow-beam trap by Monte Carlo simulations. Our study shows that the minimum optical potential at each node in our dipole trap is high enough to trap almost all cold atoms with a temperature of $120\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$ released from a standard magneto-optical trap, and an ultracold 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atomic sample with a temperature of $\ensuremath{\sim}0.73\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$ can be obtained in the trap. Starting from this stage, an all-optical Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) could be realized by using the optical-potential evaporative cooling.
Abstract In order to realize a convenient and efficient laser cooling of a single atom, we propose a simple and promising scheme to cool a single neutral atom in a blue-detuned localized hollow-beam trap by intensity-gradient induced Sisyphus cooling, and study the dynamic process of the intensity-gradient cooling of a single 87 Rb atom in the localized hollow-beam trap by using Monte-Carlo simulations. Our study shows that a single 87 Rb atom with a temperature of 120 μ K from a magneto-optical trap (MOT) can be directly cooled to a final temperature of 4.64 μ K in our proposed scheme. We also investigate the dependences of the cooling results on the laser detuning δ of the localized hollow-beam, the power RP 0 of the re-pumping laser beam, the sizes of both the localized hollow-beam and the re-pumping beam, and find that there is a pair of optimal cooling parameters ( δ and RP 0 ) for an expected lowest temperature, and the cooling results strongly depend on the size of the re-pumping beam, but weakly depend on the size of the localized hollow-beam. Finally, we further study the cooling potential of our localized hollow-beam trap for the initial temperature of a single atom, and find that a single 87 Rb atom with an initial temperature of higher than 1 mK can also be cooled directly to about 6.6 μ K.
We propose a trap based on an evanescent light wave which is formed on the surface of a conical or a pyramidal cavity in a glass substrate. The far blue-detuned evanescent wave acts as a mirror for atoms, bouncing on it in the gravitational field. In addition, fast and deep Sisyphus cooling in the evanescent wave can be organized for alkali atoms. This leads to the cooling of the atoms down to the recoil-limited temperature and their collection in the field- free region near the bottom of the trap, to form an atomic gas of extremely high density.