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Australian Journal of Physics

Production of Ultrabright Slow Atomic Beams Using Laser Cooling

Hoogerland, Dragana Milic, Wei-Jian Lu, Hans‐A. Bachor, K. G. H. Baldwin, Stephen J. Buckman

Published Apr 1, 1996• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose to use a three-step transverse and longitudinal cooling scheme, to compress and collimate a strongly diverging flow of metastable rare gas atoms. Simulations show that an atom beam flux of 1010 8-1 in a small diameter (<1 mm), well-collimated (divergence <10 mrad), slow (50 ms-1 ) atomic beam could be achieved. This technique can be extremely valuable in many areas of atomic physics, e.g. in (electron) spectroscopy and atomic collision physics where high beam densities are desirable.

DOI
10.1071/ph960567

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Bulletin of the American Physical Society•May 1, 1998•0 citations
We propose to use a three-step transverse and longitudinal cooling scheme, to compress and collimate a strongly diverging flow of metastable rare gas atoms. Simulations show that an atom beam flux of 1010 8-1 in a small diameter (<1 mm), well-collimated (divergence <10 mrad), slow (50 ms-1 ) atomic beam could be achieved. This technique can be extremely valuable in many areas of atomic physics, e.g. in (electron) spectroscopy and atomic collision physics where high beam densities are desirable.
The study of collisions between excited atoms requires high-intensity atomic beams to achieve detector signals of sufficient strength. Producing large densities of excited rare gas atoms R is especially difficult, since with conventional sources metastable atoms R make up a tiny fraction of ≈10-5 of the total beam flux. In such cases, 'brightening' the beam is the only way to achieve a sufficiently large flux. We have followed a scheme proposed by Metcalf to brighten an atomic beam of neon. The setup employs laser cooling on the Ne((3s)3P2 → (3p)3D3) cycling transition, and consists of three stages. First, we collimate all atoms emerging from a discharge source within a half-angle θ0 = 100 mrad. Second, the collimated beam is focused to a point. Third, the now converging beam is re-collimated to form a thin and bright atomic beam.
Laser manipulation techniques for neutral atoms can be used to produce atomic beams which are more intense, brighter and colder than can be achieved by any other means. These beams will have a tremendous impact on the experimental study of low‐energy atomic collisions. We first describe the design and operation of an intensifier for a thermal (axial velocity 600 m/s) beam of metastable neon atoms. The intensifier produces a gain in beam brightness of a factor 160 and a typical gain in usable flux of a factor 1400. Next, we discuss the design, construction and preliminary tests of a setup to produce an atomic beam which is slow and cold as well as bright and intense. The setup is expected to produce a beam of metastable atoms with an axial velocity of 100 m/s, a spread therein of 1.5 m/s, a diameter of 1 mm, a residual divergence of 1 mrad and a flux of 1012 atoms/s.
Intense, highly collimated sources of atoms have many potential applications. Bright beams will be important for competitive high flux and high resolution direct-write techniques in lithography, with the added advantage of parallel writing through laser manipulation. Intense sources will also be useful in other atom optic devices e.g. for loading atoms into hollow fiber waveguides. In atomic physics, many collision processes can only be measured with the sensitivity offered by such high flux sources. We report progress on the development of an intense, collimated beam of metastable helium atoms which improves the brightness generated by conventional nozzle discharge sources by several orders of magnitude. The system uses diode lasers to transversely collimate and then to longitudinally slow the atoms, using Zeeman tuning to compensate for the changing Doppler shift. The slowed, collimated beam is then compressed in a 2D magneto-optic trap before a final collimation stage, to achieve the required increase in intensity. Initial experiments using the helium source for some of the applications above are described.
Intense, highly collimated sources of atoms have many potential applications. Bright beams will be important for competitive high flux and high resolution direct-write techniques in lithography, with the added advantage of parallel writing through laser manipulation. Intense sources will also be useful in other atom optic devices e.g. for loading atoms into hollow fiber waveguides. In atomic physics, many collision processes can only be measured with the sensitivity offered by such high flux sources. We report progress on the development of an intense, collimated beam of metastable helium atoms which improves the brightness generated by conventional nozzle discharge sources by several orders of magnitude. The system uses diode lasers to transversely collimate and then to longitudinally slow the atoms, using Zeeman tuning to compensate for the changing Doppler shift. The slowed, collimated beam is then compressed in a 2D magneto-optic trap before a final collimation stage, to achieve the required increase in intensity. Initial experiments using the helium source for some of the applications above are described.
We have developed a ``beam brightener'' in which several different laser cooling methods produce a highly monochromatic, unidirectional and intense beam of metastable Ne(3s;^3P_2) atoms. The beam brightener consists of four main stages. From an exited neon source we capture in a collimating section 5× 10^11 Ne(3s)/s from which ≈ 50 % is slowed to 100 m/s in a Zeeman slower. The final velocity distribution shows a width of 3.3 m/s uc(RMS,) corresponding to a temperature of 12 mK. A fraction of ≈ 25 % of these cold atoms is captured by a magneto-optic compressor and molded into a 0.7 mm uc(FWHM) wide atomic beam that contains up to 5× 10^10 Ne(3s)/s. The resulting density is 1.1× 10^9 Ne(3s)/cm^3. In the final step, a Doppler cooler is used to minimize the divergence of the beam to 10 mrad. This value will further improve once the Doppler cooler is replaced by a sub-Doppler cooler. We plan to use this ``bright beam'' to investigate the ionization probabilities in Ne(3s)+Ne(3s) collisions. Emphasis will be on the suppression of ionization when the atoms are spin-polarized. This has important implications for the possibilities of using metastable atoms for BEC-type experiments. Present adress: NIST