Review of Scientific Instruments

Continuous, dense, highly collimated sodium beam

W. DeGraffenreid, Jaime Ramirez-Serrano, Y.-M. Liu, J. Weiner

Published Oct 1, 2000• 17 citations

Abstract

We have developed a slow, highly collimated, and bright sodium atom beam suitable for orientation and alignment studies in cold collisions. A combination of transverse-optical collimation, longitudinal cooling, rapid decoupling from the longitudinal cooling cycle, and a final “optical-force extrusion” stage produces an atom density of 1×1010 cm−3 within a beam-divergence solid angle of 2×10−6 sr. Rapid Zeeman-cooler decoupling results in a narrow laboratory velocity distribution of 5 m/s full width at half maximum and a cold binary intrabeam collision temperature of 4 mK.

DOI: 10.1063/1.1289683

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Review of Scientific Instruments

Continuous, dense, highly collimated sodium beam

W. DeGraffenreid, Jaime Ramirez-Serrano, Y.-M. Liu, J. Weiner

Published Oct 1, 2000• 17 citations

Publisher

Abstract

DOI: 10.1063/1.1289683

Related papers

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55\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mW}

. It has a narrow longitudinal velocity distribution with mean velocity

15\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{m}∕\mathrm{s}

with full width at half maximum

3.5\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{m}∕\mathrm{s}

and has a low divergence of

26\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mrad}

. The high flux enables ultrafast loading of about

{10}^{10}

atoms into a three-dimensional (3D) magneto-optical trap within 500 ms. The variation of the atomic beam flux was studied as a function of the rubidium vapor pressure, cooling laser power, transverse cooling laser beam length, detuning of the cooling laser, and relative intensities of the cooling beams along the atomic beam axis. We also discuss a detailed comparison of our measurements of the cold atomic beam with a 3D numerical simulation.

{10}^{5}

${\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ and a velocity spread of about 15 m/s full width at half maximum corresponding to a kinetic temperature less than 100 mK.