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Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters

Laser cooling of 7Li atoms in a magneto-optical trap

Boris B. Zelener, Sergey A. Saakyan, Vladimir A. Sautenkov, A. M. Akulshin, Edward A. Manykin, B. V. Zelener, Vladimir Evgenievich Fortov

Published Feb 1, 2014• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A setup for laser cooling and confining of 7 Li atoms in a magneto-optical trap has been built. The possibility of cooling and trapping of 7 Li atoms in a wide range of frequency detuning of the cooling laser has been proved experimentally. Independent information on the density and number of ultracold 7 Li atoms on various ground-state sublevels, as well as on the temperature of the atoms, has been obtained with the use of a probing tunable laser. This information is important for preparing an ultracold plasma and Rydberg matter.

DOI
10.1134/s0021364013240223

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•Jan 1, 1995•1 citation
A setup for laser cooling and confining of 7 Li atoms in a magneto-optical trap has been built. The possibility of cooling and trapping of 7 Li atoms in a wide range of frequency detuning of the cooling laser has been proved experimentally. Independent information on the density and number of ultracold 7 Li atoms on various ground-state sublevels, as well as on the temperature of the atoms, has been obtained with the use of a probing tunable laser. This information is important for preparing an ultracold plasma and Rydberg matter.
This study is aimed at obtaining high concentration of optically cooled lithium-7 atoms for preparing strongly interacting ultracold plasma and Rydberg matter. A special setup has been constructed, in which two high-power semiconductor lasers are used to cool lithium-7 atoms in a magneto-optical trap. At an optimum detuning of the cooling laser frequency and a magnetic field gradient of 35 G/cm, the concentration of ultracold lithium-7 atoms reaches about 10 11 cm −3 . Additional independent information about the concentration and number of ultracold lithium-7 atoms on different sublevels of the ground state was obtained by using of an additional probing laser.
Our goal is the preparation and study of ultra- cold plasma and Rydberg matter. We assembled an ex- perimental setup for laser cooling of lithium atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Trapping of 7 Li atoms in a MOT is demonstrated for a wide range of cooling laser detunings. The number density of 7 Li atoms at different ground-state sublevels is measured by using a probe tun- able laser. The temperature of the trapped atoms is esti- mated. Obtained information is important for the prepara- tion of ultra-cold plasma and highly-excited atoms. duction of recombination in such systems. Our theoreti- cal works show the appearance of short and long-range order (7) and a large reduction of the recombination rate (a few orders of magnitude) in the ultra-cold mixture of Rydberg atoms and plasma in the presence of a strong magnetic field (8-11). The ability to control the decay and crystallization processes in an ensemble of Rydberg atoms could find an application in quantum storage and quan- tum computers. The suggested experiments can model the behavior of the plasma recombination in experiments on creating anti-hydrogen (12-14), and help to increase the number of ground state anti-hydrogen atoms in a strong magnetic field. It is noteworthy that lithium is an element which is very close to hydrogen.
To prepare cold lithium atoms for atomic interferometry experiments, we have carried out experimental researches on Zeeman deceleration and magneto-optical trap (MOT) of lithium atoms. We have also designed and implemented a compact adjustable Zeeman slower with an inner water cooling chamber, to decelerate the velocity of the 7Li atom beam from 600 m/s down to 60 m/s, and load them into the MOT. The loading rate is 5108 /s, the total trapped atom number is 1109 , and the lowest temperature of the atom cloud is 220 30 K. Then we investigate the dependence of lifetime of 7Li atoms in optical molasses on the detuning of trapping laser beams. The above results lay a foundation for further sub-Doppler cooling, optical trap based on evaporative cooling, and atomic interferometry experiments.
 A detailed experimental and theoretical investigation of a magneto-optical trap for caesium atoms is presented. Particular emphasis has been placed on achieving high spatial number densities and low temperatures. Optimizing both of these together enables efficient evaporative cooling from a conservative trap, a procedure which has recently led to the first observations of Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute atomic vapour. The behaviour of a magneto-optical trap is nominally determined by four independent parameters: the detuning and intensity of the light field, the magnetic field gradient and the number of trapped atoms. A model is presented which incorporates previous treatments into a single description of the trap that encompasses a wide range of its behaviour. This model was tested quantitatively by measuring the temperature of the cloud and its spatial distribution as a function of the four parameters. The maximum density was found to be limited both by the reabsorption of photons scattered within the cloud and by a reduction of the confining force at small light shifts. The nonlinear variation with position of the restoring force was found to be significant in limiting the number of atoms confined to a high density. A maximum density in phase space (defined as the number of atoms in a box with sides of dimension one thermal de Broglie wavelength) of (1.5 ± 0.5) x 10-5 was observed, with a spatial density of 1.5 x 1011 atoms per cm3. Cold collision losses from a caesium magneto-optical trap have been studied with the purpose of assessing their influence on spatial densities. In contrast to previous measurements of similar quantities, these measurements did not require the use of an ultra-low ( A study is presented of a modified magneto-optical trap in which a fraction of the population is shelved into a hyperfine level that does not interact with the trapping light. In this so-called dark magneto-optical trap, improved densities of nearly 1012cm-3 have been previously reported for sodium. The application of the technique to caesium is not straightforward due to the larger excited state hyperfine splittings. A simple theory for caesium is presented and its main predictions verified by measurements of density, number and temperature. A density of nearly 1012cm,-3 was indeed obtained but at a temperature substantially higher than in the conventional magneto-optical trap.