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European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC)

Actio Causes Reactio: Gravito-Optical Trapping of Three-Level Atoms

Karl-Peter Marzlin, Jürgen Audretsch

Published Jan 1, 1996• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate an atomic three-level Λ-system which is exposed to two counterpropagating laser fields (inducing Raman transitions) and which is closed by a magnetic hyperfine field tuned to be in resonance with the transition between the two ground states. The influence of a homogeneous gravitational field is included in a full quantum treatment of the internal and external dynamics of the atom. It is shown that the combined influence of the gravitational field and the lasers lead for specific momentum values with a very high probability to a transition of the Landau-Zener type. This is accompanied by a momentum transfer resulting in an upward kick. For appropriate initial conditions a sequence of up and down motions is obtained. No mirror is needed. A gravito-optical trapping of atoms based on this effect seems to be realizable. PACS: 42.50.Vk, 32.80.Lg, 32.80.Pj 1

DOI
10.1109/eqec.1996.561819

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We investigate an atomic three-level Λ-system which is exposed to two counterpropagating laser fields (inducing Raman transitions) and which is closed by a magnetic hyperfine field tuned to be in resonance with the transition between the two ground states. The influence of a homogeneous gravitational field is included in a full quantum treatment of the internal and external dynamics of the atom. It is shown that the combined influence of the gravitational field and the lasers lead for specific momentum values with a very high probability to a transition of the Landau-Zener type. This is accompanied by a momentum transfer resulting in an upward kick. For appropriate initial conditions a sequence of up and down motions is obtained. No mirror is needed. A gravito-optical trapping of atoms based on this effect seems to be realizable. PACS: 42.50.Vk, 32.80.Lg, 32.80.Pj 1
We investigate an atomic three-level \ensuremath{\Lambda} system which is exposed to two counterpropagating laser fields (inducing Raman transitions) and which is closed by a magnetic hyperfine field tuned to be in resonance with the transition between the two ground states. The influence of a homogeneous gravitational field is included in a full quantum treatment of the internal and external dynamics of the atom. It is shown that the combined influence of the gravitational field and the lasers lead for specific momentum values with a very high probability to a transition of the Landau-Zener type. This is accompanied by a momentum transfer resulting in an upward kick. For appropriate initial conditions a sequence of up and down motions is obtained. No mirror is needed. A gravito-optical trapping of atoms based on this effect seems to be realizable. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
A sodium atomic beam is deflected by two optical standing-wave fields which excite near resonance Raman transitions. Observed deflections are consistent with theoretical predictions of a long-range dc component of the force on a three-level atom in the \ensuremath{\Lambda} configuration. The low laser intensities (and small detunings) used, combined with observed evidence of damping in the three-level \ensuremath{\Lambda} system, may ultimately lead to the design of high-density, all optical traps wherein the atoms would be mostly in the dark state.
Sodium atoms prepared in hyperfine ground-state 11 > are driven to the other ground-state hyperfine level 12> when two laser beams nearly resonant with an optical transition have a frequency difference equal to the ground-state hyperfine splitting. When the two laser beams are counterpropagating, conservation of momentum between the atom and the light field requires that the atom acquire a velocity kick ~22 ħk/m during the 11> and 12> transition (~6 cm/sec in our experiment). When the lasers are detuned far from the optical transition, spontaneous emission from the intermediate optical level becomes negligible, and the atom behaves as a two-level system coupled to a resonant rf driving field. We have created an interferometer by applying a π/2-π-π/2 Raman pulse sequence: a first π/2 pulse coherently splits the atomic wave packet by putting it in a superposition of states 11> and 12>, a second π pulse occurring a time Δt later redirects each wave packet and a final π/2 pulse recombines the wave packets at time 2Δt. We have observed wave packet interference for wave packet separations of 2.4 mm and, by using the interferometer as an accelerometer, have measured the atom’s acceleration due to gravity to 3 parts in 106.
We discuss our recent experimental demonstrations of three novel atom traps which are all based on the optical dipole force in far-detuned laser light. In the gravito-optical surface trap (GOST), Cs atoms are trapped and cooled by means of an evanescent-wave mirror very closely above a dielectric surface. This trap allows for optical cooling at very high densities and provides good starting conditions for evaporative cooling to quantum degeneracy and the realization of a 2D quantum gas. The conical atom trap (CAT) uses a hollow blue-detuned laser beam in combination with gravity to trap atoms in a dark spatial region. This trap is experimentally simple and provides high loading efficiency, tight confinement, efficient sub-Doppler cooling, and strong suppression of collisional losses. The standing-wave red-detuned (STAR) trap allows one to confine atoms in a shallow optical potential at a very low photon scattering rate, and is thus an interesting tool for studies of the atomic ground-state dynamics in external electro-magnetic fields. We have studied atomic spin polarization in this trap.
We present two schemes for driving Raman transitions between the ground-state hyperfine manifolds of a single atom trapped within a high-finesse optical cavity. In both schemes, the Raman coupling is generated by standing-wave fields inside the cavity, thus circumventing the optical access limitations that free-space Raman schemes must face in a cavity system. These cavity-based Raman schemes can be used to coherently manipulate both the internal and motional degrees of freedom of the atom, and thus provide powerful tools for studying cavity quantum electrodynamics. We give a detailed theoretical analysis of each scheme, both for a three-level atom and for a multilevel cesium atom. In addition, we show how these Raman schemes can be used to cool the axial motion of the atom to the quantum ground state, and we perform computer simulations of the cooling process.