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Physica Scripta

Brightening of a supersonic beam of neutral atoms

Erik Anciaux, Georgios Stratis, Mark G. Raizen

Published Oct 10, 2018• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Well-collimated, high-intensity beams of neutral atoms have many applications ranging from atom microscopy to atom interferometry to ultracold atomic physics. We experimentally demonstrate a method for brightening a supersonic atomic beam and observe an increase in the phase space density by a factor of at least 20. Our scheme relies upon a permanent magnetic hexapole lens to focus a divergent beam of neutral atoms emitted from a supersonic nozzle and transverse laser cooling as the beam converges downstream from the lens so as to create a dense, narrow, Doppler-collimated atomic beam. In principle, this method can be repeated multiple times in series for further beam brightening.

DOI
10.1088/1402-4896/aae716

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•Jan 1, 1997•0 citations
Abstract Well-collimated, high-intensity beams of neutral atoms have many applications ranging from atom microscopy to atom interferometry to ultracold atomic physics. We experimentally demonstrate a method for brightening a supersonic atomic beam and observe an increase in the phase space density by a factor of at least 20. Our scheme relies upon a permanent magnetic hexapole lens to focus a divergent beam of neutral atoms emitted from a supersonic nozzle and transverse laser cooling as the beam converges downstream from the lens so as to create a dense, narrow, Doppler-collimated atomic beam. In principle, this method can be repeated multiple times in series for further beam brightening.
This dissertation presents progress on an atomic beam brightening and focusing experiment that has been shown to create a beam with higher brightness and greater resolution than that of any previous atomic focusing experiment. Our method of beam brightening relies upon using a permanent magnetic hexapole as a lens in conjunction with transverse laser cooling to focus and collimate a supersonic beam of metastable neon atoms. We then use an adjustable electromagnetic hexapole as a lens to focus the brightened atomic beam. Neutral atom beams have long been used as a tool to spectroscopically probe two dimensional surfaces, however the lack of a means to create bright, high-resolution neutral atom beams has limited their utility as a nanoscale resolution probing mechanism. While optical and electron microscopy have been the workhorses of microscopy for decades, we believe that our scheme for beam brightening and focusing will unleash the promise of neutral atom microscopy. Our scheme of beam brightening and focusing can be repeated in series and reveals a pathway to true high density nanoscale neutral atom focusing. Simulations suggest that when combined with aberration correction, our scheme will be able to produce an atomic beam with sufficient brightness and resolution to be useful as a surface sensitive nanoscale probe.
We demonstrate an intense, continuous cold atom beam generated via post nozzle seeding of a supersonic helium jet with 7^77Li atoms. The nozzle is cooled to about 4.4 K to reduce the forward velocity of the atoms. The atomic beam is brought to a focus 175 cm from the nozzle by a 10 cm bore diameter magnetic hexapole lens. Absorption and fluorescence imaging of the focus show a flux of 2.3(4)×10122.3(4) \times 10^{12}2.3(4)×1012 atoms/s, brightness of 4.1(7)×10194.1(7)\times 10^{19}4.1(7)×1019 m−2s−1sr−1\textrm{m}^{-2}\textrm{s}^{-1}\textrm{sr}^{-1}m−2s−1sr−1, forward velocity of 211(2) m/s, and longitudinal temperature of 7(3) mK. Results agree with a Monte Carlo simulation of the seeding dynamics and a particle tracing simulation of the atom lens. We project that 10 times higher flux would be possible with improved vacuum system design. Our method should provide a useful high-brightness source for atom-optical and other atomic and molecular physics applications.
The study of collisions between excited atoms requires high-intensity atomic beams to achieve detector signals of sufficient strength. Producing large densities of excited rare gas atoms R is especially difficult, since with conventional sources metastable atoms R make up a tiny fraction of ≈10-5 of the total beam flux. In such cases, 'brightening' the beam is the only way to achieve a sufficiently large flux. We have followed a scheme proposed by Metcalf to brighten an atomic beam of neon. The setup employs laser cooling on the Ne((3s)3P2 → (3p)3D3) cycling transition, and consists of three stages. First, we collimate all atoms emerging from a discharge source within a half-angle θ0 = 100 mrad. Second, the collimated beam is focused to a point. Third, the now converging beam is re-collimated to form a thin and bright atomic beam.
We have developed a ``beam brightener'' in which several different laser cooling methods produce a highly monochromatic, unidirectional and intense beam of metastable Ne(3s;^3P_2) atoms. The beam brightener consists of four main stages. From an exited neon source we capture in a collimating section 5× 10^11 Ne(3s)/s from which ≈ 50 % is slowed to 100 m/s in a Zeeman slower. The final velocity distribution shows a width of 3.3 m/s uc(RMS,) corresponding to a temperature of 12 mK. A fraction of ≈ 25 % of these cold atoms is captured by a magneto-optic compressor and molded into a 0.7 mm uc(FWHM) wide atomic beam that contains up to 5× 10^10 Ne(3s)/s. The resulting density is 1.1× 10^9 Ne(3s)/cm^3. In the final step, a Doppler cooler is used to minimize the divergence of the beam to 10 mrad. This value will further improve once the Doppler cooler is replaced by a sub-Doppler cooler. We plan to use this ``bright beam'' to investigate the ionization probabilities in Ne(3s)+Ne(3s) collisions. Emphasis will be on the suppression of ionization when the atoms are spin-polarized. This has important implications for the possibilities of using metastable atoms for BEC-type experiments. Present adress: NIST
Intense, highly collimated sources of atoms have many potential applications. Bright beams will be important for competitive high flux and high resolution direct-write techniques in lithography, with the added advantage of parallel writing through laser manipulation. Intense sources will also be useful in other atom optic devices e.g. for loading atoms into hollow fiber waveguides. In atomic physics, many collision processes can only be measured with the sensitivity offered by such high flux sources. We report progress on the development of an intense, collimated beam of metastable helium atoms which improves the brightness generated by conventional nozzle discharge sources by several orders of magnitude. The system uses diode lasers to transversely collimate and then to longitudinally slow the atoms, using Zeeman tuning to compensate for the changing Doppler shift. The slowed, collimated beam is then compressed in a 2D magneto-optic trap before a final collimation stage, to achieve the required increase in intensity. Initial experiments using the helium source for some of the applications above are described.
Intense, highly collimated sources of atoms have many potential applications. Bright beams will be important for competitive high flux and high resolution direct-write techniques in lithography, with the added advantage of parallel writing through laser manipulation. Intense sources will also be useful in other atom optic devices e.g. for loading atoms into hollow fiber waveguides. In atomic physics, many collision processes can only be measured with the sensitivity offered by such high flux sources. We report progress on the development of an intense, collimated beam of metastable helium atoms which improves the brightness generated by conventional nozzle discharge sources by several orders of magnitude. The system uses diode lasers to transversely collimate and then to longitudinally slow the atoms, using Zeeman tuning to compensate for the changing Doppler shift. The slowed, collimated beam is then compressed in a 2D magneto-optic trap before a final collimation stage, to achieve the required increase in intensity. Initial experiments using the helium source for some of the applications above are described.