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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

Laser-cooled Rb clocks

Chad Fertig, Wenko Süptitz, Kurt Gibble

Published Nov 27, 2002• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Summary form only given. We have constructed a prototype of an /sup 87/Rb fountain clock. We collect 10/sup 10/ /sup 87/Rb atoms in a vapor cell magneto-optic trap (MOT). The laser system for trapping and cooling is entirely solid state--a grating stabilized laser injects a separate slave laser for each of the six beams of the MOT. We launch the atoms by frequency shifting the three downward propagating laser beams and then increasing the detuning and gradually reducing the intensity of the slave lasers to adiabatically cool the atoms to low temperatures in the fountain.

DOI
10.1109/iqec.1998.680417

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Summary form only given. We have constructed a prototype of an /sup 87/Rb fountain clock. We collect 10/sup 10/ /sup 87/Rb atoms in a vapor cell magneto-optic trap (MOT). The laser system for trapping and cooling is entirely solid state--a grating stabilized laser injects a separate slave laser for each of the six beams of the MOT. We launch the atoms by frequency shifting the three downward propagating laser beams and then increasing the detuning and gradually reducing the intensity of the slave lasers to adiabatically cool the atoms to low temperatures in the fountain.
We report an experiment on the adiabatic cooling of 87 Rb atoms in an atomic fountain to a temperature as low as 1.5 μK, which is roughly twice the recoil temperature. The atomic fountain has the (1,1,1) optical geometry for cooling and launching of cold atoms. The atoms are first cooled in an optical molasses of 6 beams to 3.4 μK by polarization gradient geometry and then are adiabatically cooled by decreasing the intensity of laser from 1.8I s per beam to zero in 1 ms during the launching of cold atoms. We also study the dependences of atomic temperature on different laser parameters. The method we used is useful in any cold atom physics experiment.
We demonstrate launching of laser-cooled Yb atoms in a cold atomic fountain. Atoms in a collimated thermal beam are first cooled and captured in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) operating on the strongly allowed ${{}^{1}S}_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{{}^{1}P}_{1}$ transition at 399 nm (blue line). They are then transferred to a MOT on the weakly allowed ${{}^{1}S}_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{{}^{3}P}_{1}$ transition at 556 nm (green line). Cold atoms from the green MOT are launched against gravity at a velocity of around 2.5 m/s using a pair of green beams. We trap more than 107{10}^{7}107 atoms in the blue MOT and transfer up to 7070%70 into the green MOT. The temperature for the odd isotope 171Yb^{171}\mathrm{Yb}171Yb is  1mK~1 \mathrm{mK} 1mK in the blue MOT, and reduces by a factor of 40 in the green MOT.
Summary form only given. We discuss our compact clock physics package and report the realization of a continuous, cold Cs atomic beam from a vapor-cell magneto-optical trap (MOT) of Cs atoms. Briefly, we generate the cold Cs beam by perturbing the trap potentials with a small opaque disk inserted in one of the MOT beams. Along the narrow dark column thus formed, Cs atoms are continuously accelerated out of the trap volume to form a Cs beam while the MOT remains in functioning of capturing and cooling Cs atoms from the Cs vapor. The fluorescence image of the Cs trap and the continuous Cs atomic beam are shown. Our MOT captures and confines 8 /spl times/ 10/sup 7/ Cs atoms at a loading rate of 2 /spl times/ 10/sup 8/ atoms/s and cools the atoms to a thermal temperature of 300 /spl mu/K. The longitudinal velocity of the cold Cs beam is measured by a time of flight (TOF) method. A single-shot laser-induced fluorescence signal recorded at a distance of 18 cm downstream from the MOT is shown. Under the nominal experimental conditions, the TOF measurement determines that our cold Cs atomic beam travels at 7 m/s and has a velocity spread of 0.9 m/s. With the cold Cs beam thus formed and a compact Ramsey cavity of 20 cm in length, we have estimated a short-term Allan deviation of 1.8 /spl times/ 10/sup -13/ /spl tau//sup -1/2/ (T is the averaging time) for the atomic clock under development.