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Physical Review A

Longitudinal focusing of an atomic cloud using pulsed magnetic forces

É. Maréchal, S. Guibal, J.-L. Bossennec, R. Barbé, J. Keller, O. Gorceix

Published Jun 1, 1999• 53 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report on a detailed study of the focusing properties of inhomogeneous magnetic fields. The experiment is performed using cold cesium atom clouds released from a magneto-optical trap. The sample longitudinal distributions are being compressed under the influence of a pulsed parabolic magnetic potential. Achromatic imaging potentialities are demonstrated. Analogies with usual optics are pointed out. A velocity compression is obtained, leading to a cloud longitudinal effective temperature down to 220 nK for a proper choice of the experimental parameters. The observation of strong compressions is corroborated by numerical simulations in excellent agreement with the experimental data. The principle of the method is presented in view of an elementary one-dimensional model and its limits are discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.59.4636

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This thesis presents the study of atomic cloud density and temperature in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). The purpose is to find the method in obtaining the densest and coldest cloud the setup can produce. In steady state trap, the highest atomic density possible is that of a cloud in multiple scattering regime where a repulsive force between atoms sets a limit to the density. The number of atoms loaded into the trap is controlled by the trapping beam intensity which also changes the temperature. Therefore the trap density and temperature cannot be controlled separately. The cloud compression is studied as a method of increasing atomic density above what is possible in steady state trap without noticeable influence on the cloud temperature. Cloud compression is also found when the cloud is translated by changing the magnetic field zero-point although in a less predictable fashion than the compression.
We extract a cold rubidium 85 atomic beam from a magneto-optical trap using the technique based on the pulsed Zeeman-imbalanced radiation pressure. We observe the separation of an atomic beam on a velocity scale associated with the two-photon sub-Doppler resonances in the radiation pressure force, and show that experimental observations are in good agreement with theoretical predictions. We find that under optimal conditions an atomic beam extracted by a homogeneous magnetic field has a longitudinal temperature in a region of $12--30 \ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K},$ which is an order of magnitude lower than the temperatures obtained so far with the magnetic scheme.
We experimentally investigate one-dimensional (1D) expansion of a cold cloud of cesium atoms in orthogonal 2D configuration of near resonant laser beams by temporally modulating a pair of counterpropagating trapping beams of a magneto-optical trap (MOT). The cloud is observed to undergo ballistic expansion followed by superballistic explosive growth due to the fluctuations of the 2D radiation force. A model based on the theory of Brownian motion is developed and a comparison of experiments with theory is shown to provide a direct measure of the velocity diffusion coefficient. We also observe sudden contraction of the cloud immediately after switching off the pair of trapping beams, which provides direct evidence for the existence of the radiation trapping force in a MOT.
A method for focusing neutral atoms based on the light-pressure force in a nonuniform magnetic field is proposed and analyzed. Its particular scheme is realized by means of a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap using a thermal beam of Rb atoms. A feature of this focusing method is the linear dependence of the focal length on the longitudinal velocity of atoms in contrast to the quadratic dependence in the known methods of focusing material-particle beams. The minimum size of the waist of the focused atomic beam is equal to 270 µm. Owing to focusing by means of the two-dimensional magneto-optical trap, the velocity monochromatization of a thermal atomic beam is realized: the width of the distribution of the longitudinal atomic velocities in the beam is reduced from 350 to 60 m/s.
We describe a simple time-of-flight technique for measuring the magnetic moment of an optically pumped magneto-optical trap. The technique relies on free-expansion imaging of a cold atom cloud in a small magnetic field gradient without the need to detect spatial separation between magnetic sublevels. We find that the effective acceleration of the cloud can be used to characterize extreme state optical pumping. In the general case, we show that the integrated displacement of the falling cloud can be accurately modeled using rate equation simulations of magnetic sublevel populations, and knowledge of local magnetic fields, field gradients, and light intensities. The agreement between the model and the data allows the reconstruction of magnetic moments and suggests that this technique may be suitable for the measurement of population distributions over a range of optical pumping conditions.