Cesium gas strongly confined in one dimension: Sideband cooling and collisional properties
Isabelle Bouchoule, M. Morinaga, Ch Salomon +1 more
We study one-dimensional (1D) sideband cooling of cesium atoms strongly confined in a far-detuned optical lattice. The Lamb-Dicke regime is achieved in the lattice direction whereas the transverse confinement is much weaker. The employed sideband cooling method, first studied by Vuleti\ifmmode \acute{c}\else \'{c}\fi{} et al., uses Raman transitions between Zeeman levels and produces a spin-polarized sample. We present a detailed study of this cooling method and investigate the role of elastic collisions in the system. We accumulate 83(5)% of the atoms in the vibrational ground state of the strongly confined motion, and elastic collisions cool the transverse motion to a temperature of $2.8\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}=0.7\ensuremath{\Elzxh}{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathrm{osc}}{/k}_{B},$ where ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathrm{osc}}$ is the oscillation frequency in the strongly confined direction. The sample then approaches the regime of a quasi-2D cold gas. We analyze the limits of this cooling method and propose a dynamical change of the trapping potential as a mean of cooling the atomic sample to still lower temperatures. Measurements of the rate of thermalization between the weakly and strongly confined degrees of freedom are compatible with the zero-energy scattering resonance observed previously in weak 3D traps. For the explored temperature range the measurements agree with recent calculations of quasi-2D collisions. Transparent analytical models reproduce the expected behavior for ${k}_{B}T\ensuremath{\gg}\ensuremath{\Elzxh}{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathrm{osc}}$ and also for ${k}_{B}T\ensuremath{\ll}\ensuremath{\Elzxh}{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathrm{osc}}$ where the 2D features are prominent.
arXiv:quant-ph/0106032•Physical Review A•Feb 1, 2002•16 citations