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Quantum Electronics

Collimation of a thulium atomic beam by two-dimensional optical molasses

Денис Дмитриевич Сукачев, Елена Сергеевна Калганова, А. В. Соколов, A. V. Savchenkov, Gulnara A. Vishnyakova, Artem A. Golovizin, Alexey V. Akimov, N. Kolachevsky, Vadim N Sorokin

Published Apr 30, 2013• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The number of laser cooled and trapped thulium atoms in a magneto-optical trap is increased by a factor of 3 using a two-dimensional optical molasses which collimated the atomic beam before entering a Zeeman slower. A diode laser operating at 410.6 nm was employed to form optical molasses: The laser was heated to 70 Degree-Sign C by a two-step temperature stabilisation system. The laser system consisting of a master oscillator and an injection-locked amplifier emitted more than 100 mW at 410 nm and had a spectral linewidth of 0.6 MHz. (extreme light fields and their applications)

DOI
10.1070/qe2013v043n04abeh015118

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The number of laser cooled and trapped thulium atoms in a magneto-optical trap is increased by a factor of 3 using a two-dimensional optical molasses which collimated the atomic beam before entering a Zeeman slower. A diode laser operating at 410.6 nm was employed to form optical molasses: The laser was heated to 70 Degree-Sign C by a two-step temperature stabilisation system. The laser system consisting of a master oscillator and an injection-locked amplifier emitted more than 100 mW at 410 nm and had a spectral linewidth of 0.6 MHz. (extreme light fields and their applications)
Thulium atoms are trapped in a magneto-optical trap using a strong transition at 410410410 nm with a small branching ratio. We trap up to $7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{4}$ atoms at a temperature of 0.8(2)0.8(2)0.8(2) mK after deceleration in a 404040-cm-long Zeeman slower. Optical leaks from the cooling cycle influence the lifetime of atoms in the magneto-optical trap which varies between 0.30.30.3 and 1.51.51.5 s in our experiments. The lower limit for the leaking rate from the upper cooling level is measured to be 22(6)22(6)22(6) ${\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$. The repumping laser transferring the atomic population out of the F=3F=3F=3 hyperfine ground-state sublevel gives a 3030%30 increase for the lifetime and the number of atoms in the trap.
Sub-Doppler laser cooling in a magneto-optical trap for thulium atoms at a wavelength of 410.6 nm has been experimentally studied. Without any dedicated molasses period of sub-Doppler cooling, the cloud of 3 × 106 atoms at a temperature of 25(5) μK was observed. The measured temperature is significantly lower than the Doppler limit of 240 μK for the cooling transition at 410.6 nm. The high efficiency of the sub-Doppler cooling process is due to a near-degeneracy of the Landé g-factors of the lower 4f 136s 2 (J = 7/2) and the upper 4f 125d 3/26s 2 (J = 9/2) cooling levels.
Dysprosium is the most magnetic element on the periodic table, which gives it the potential to display exotic physics. To study magnetic interacting atoms, we plan to capture single atoms of Dysprosium in optical tweezers, as done with Rubidium atoms in [1]. The first step is a 3D magneto-optical trap (MOT), which combines the optical molasses technique [2] and spatial-dependent Zeeman splitting [3] to trap a cloud of Dysprosium atoms. The MOT is inside an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) chamber and an effusion cell produces a hot beam of Dysprosium atoms, from which it loads. An amplified external cavity diode laser, locked to an optical reference cavity, generates the 421 nm light that forms the optical molasses. Water-cooled coils in a quadrupole configuration generate the magnetic fields. Our experiment is the first to load the MOT directly in the hot beam, prioritising simplicity over a large MOT population by going without a 2D MOT or Zeeman slower, used in [4] and [5]. This thesis presents our design and implementation of the simple Dysprosium MOT, shown in Fig. 1. We also show the characteristics of the MOT and atomic source. The simplification of the Dysprosium MOT is twofold: it does not require frequency doubling setups to generate the laser light [5,6] and the aforementioned pre-cooling stages [5,7]. Simplifying this process allows more laboratories worldwide to implement Dysprosium trapping and further our understanding of its exotic physics.
We demonstrated laser cooling and trapping of thulium atoms at sub-Doppler temperatures in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Up to 3 × 10 6 thulium atoms were trapped in the MOT at temperatures down to 25(5) μK which is approximately 10 times lower than the Doppler limit. The lifetime of atoms in the MOT varied between 0.3–1.5 s and was restricted mostly by optical leaks from the upper cooling level. The lower limit for the leaking rate was estimated to be 22(6) s −1 . Due to a big magnetic moment of Tm atoms, a part of them were trapped in a magnetic trap from the quadrupole field of the MOT. We observed about 3 × 10 4 purely magnetically trapped atoms at temperature of 25 μK with a lifetime in the trap of 0.5 s. Also we set up a “dark” MOT consisting of six crossed hollow beams which increased the number of trapped atoms by a factor of 5 leading to 1.5 × 10 7 atoms at the expense of higher temperature.
We have developed a compact vacuum system for laser cooling and spectroscopy of neutral thulium atoms. Compactness is achieved by obviating a classical Zeeman slower section and placing an atomic oven close to a magneto-optical trap (MOT), specifically at the distance of 11 cm. In this configuration, we significantly gained in solid angle of an atomic beam, which is affected by MOT laser beams, and reached 1 million atoms loaded directly in the MOT with only 15 mW of MOT cooling beams net power. By exploiting Zeeman-like deceleration of atoms with an additional laser beam and tailoring the MOT magnetic field gradient with a small magnetic coil, we demonstrated trapping of up to 13 million atoms. These results show great perspective of the developed setup for realizing a compact high-performance optical atomic clock based on thulium atoms.
Second-stage laser cooling of thulium atoms at the 530.7 nm transition with a natural linewidth of 350 kHz offers an interesting possibility to study different regimes of a magneto-optical trap (MOT). The intermediate value of the spectral linewidth of the cooling transition allows the observation of three distinct regimes depending on the intensity and detuning of the cooling beams, namely, the ``bowl-shaped'' regime when light pressure force competes with gravity, the ``double structure'' regime with interplay between the Doppler and polarization-gradient (sub-Doppler) cooling, and the ``symmetric'' regime when Doppler cooling dominates over sub-Doppler cooling and gravity. The polarization-gradient cooling manifests itself by a two-temperature momentum distribution of atoms resulting in a double-structure of the spatial MOT profile consisting of a cold central fraction surrounded by a hot halo. We studied the double structure regime at different saturation parameters and compared observations with calculations based on semiclassical and quantum approaches. The quantum treatment adequately reproduces experimental results if the MOT magnetic field is properly taken into account.