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Physics World

Optical traps spring more surprises

Dieter Meschede

Published Sep 1, 1991• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The confinement of atoms directly from the gas phase in a magneto-optical trap not much more delicate than an ordinary light bulb was first reported about a year ago. Now groups at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris have measured unexpectedly narrow absorption spectra (less than the natural linewidth) and amplification of an additional probe laser passing through the cooled caesium atoms in such a trap.

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/4/9/22

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The confinement of atoms directly from the gas phase in a magneto-optical trap not much more delicate than an ordinary light bulb was first reported about a year ago. Now groups at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris have measured unexpectedly narrow absorption spectra (less than the natural linewidth) and amplification of an additional probe laser passing through the cooled caesium atoms in such a trap.
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For years atomic and nuclear physicists have dreamed of doing experiments with dense, trapped gases of cold, neutral, radioactive atoms. With such samples they could perform precision spectroscopy of radioactive atoms, search for electric dipole moments (indicative of time-reversalsymmetry violation), study parity violation and electroweak effects in atomic transitions and β decay, and more. As reported in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters, such experiments took a step (or perhaps three) closer to reality when groups at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the University of Colorado demonstrated the feasibility of quickly and efficiently transporting and capturing large numbers of atoms from a vapor or an atomic beam.
Winning the Nobel prize for physics is like being hit by a tornado, according to one of this year's laureates. "I just wish it would stop so that I could go back to work," says Claude Cohen-Tannoudji of the Collège de France and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He shares the 1997 prize with Steve Chu of Stanford University in California and Bill Phillips of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, for developing techniques to cool and trap atoms at extremely low temperatures using lasers.