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Laser cooling with adiabatic transfer on a Raman transition

Greve, Graham, Wu, Baochen, James K. Thompson

Published Jul 1, 2019• 5 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Sawtooth Wave Adiabatic Passage (SWAP) laser cooling was recently demonstrated using a narrow-linewidth single-photon optical transition in atomic strontium and may prove useful for cooling other atoms and molecules. However, many atoms and molecules lack the appropriate narrow optical transition. Here we use such an atom, 87Rb, to demonstrate that two-photon Raman transitions with arbitrarily-tunable linewidths can be used to achieve 1D SWAP cooling without significantly populating the intermediate excited state. Unlike SWAP cooling on a narrow transition, Raman SWAP cooling allows for a final 1D temperature well below the Doppler cooling limit (here, 25 times lower); and the effective excited state decay rate can be modified in time, presenting another degree of freedom during the cooling process. We also develop a generic model for Raman Landau-Zener transitions in the presence of small residual free-space scattering for future applications of SWAP cooling in other atoms or molecules.

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Sawtooth Wave Adiabatic Passage (SWAP) laser cooling was recently demonstrated using a narrow-linewidth single-photon optical transition in atomic strontium and may prove useful for cooling other atoms and molecules. However, many atoms and molecules lack the appropriate narrow optical transition. Here we use such an atom, 87Rb, to demonstrate that two-photon Raman transitions with arbitrarily-tunable linewidths can be used to achieve 1D SWAP cooling without significantly populating the intermediate excited state. Unlike SWAP cooling on a narrow transition, Raman SWAP cooling allows for a final 1D temperature well below the Doppler cooling limit (here, 25 times lower); and the effective excited state decay rate can be modified in time, presenting another degree of freedom during the cooling process. We also develop a generic model for Raman Landau-Zener transitions in the presence of small residual free-space scattering for future applications of SWAP cooling in other atoms or molecules.
Abstract Sawtooth Wave Adiabatic Passage (SWAP) laser cooling was recently demonstrated using a narrow-linewidth single-photon optical transition in atomic strontium and may prove useful for cooling other atoms and molecules. However, many atoms and molecules lack the appropriate narrow optical transition. Here we use such an atom, 87Rb, to demonstrate that two-photon Raman transitions with arbitrarily-tunable linewidths can be used to achieve 1D SWAP cooling without significantly populating the intermediate excited state. Unlike SWAP cooling on a narrow transition, Raman SWAP cooling allows for a final 1D temperature well below the Doppler cooling limit (here, 25 times lower); and the effective excited state decay rate can be modified in time, presenting another degree of freedom during the cooling process. We also develop a generic model for Raman Landau–Zener transitions in the presence of small residual free-space scattering for future applications of SWAP cooling in other atoms or molecules.
We provide a theoretical analysis for a recently demonstrated cooling method. Two-level particles undergo successive adiabatic transfers upon interaction with counterpropagating laser beams that are repeatedly swept over the transition frequency. We show that particles with narrow linewidth transitions can be cooled to near the recoil limit. This cooling mechanism has a reduced reliance on spontaneous emission compared to Doppler cooling, and hence shows promise for application to systems lacking closed cycling transitions, such as molecules.
We propose and demonstrate a novel laser cooling mechanism applicable to particles with narrow-linewidth optical transitions. By sweeping the frequency of counter-propagating laser beams in a sawtooth manner, we cause adiabatic transfer back and forth between the ground state and a long-lived optically excited state. The time-ordering of these adiabatic transfers is determined by Doppler shifts, which ensures that the associated photon recoils are in the opposite direction to the particle's motion. This ultimately leads to a robust cooling mechanism capable of exerting large forces via a weak transition and with reduced reliance on spontaneous emission. We present a simple intuitive model for the resulting frictional force, and directly demonstrate its efficacy for increasing the total phase-space density of an atomic ensemble. We rely on both simulation and experimental studies using the 7.5 kHz linewidth 1 S 0 to 3 P 1 transition in 88 Sr. The reduced reliance on spontaneous emission may allow this adiabatic sweep method to be a useful tool for cooling particles that lack closed cycling transitions, such as molecules.
We investigate theoretically the application of sawtooth-wave adiabatic passage (SWAP) in a one-dimensional (1D) magneto-optical trap (MOT). As opposed to related methods that have been previously discussed, our approach utilizes repeated cycles of stimulated absorption and emission processes to achieve both trapping and cooling, thereby reducing the adverse effects that arise from photon scattering. Specifically, we demonstrate this method's ability to cool, slow, and trap particles with fewer spontaneously emitted photons, with higher forces, and in less time when compared to a traditional MOT scheme that utilizes the same narrow linewidth transition. We calculate the phase-space compression that is achievable and characterize the resulting system equilibrium cloud size and temperature.
We present a simple and general optical cooling method based on 3D degenerate Raman sideband cooling with adiabatic release that goes significantly beyond the density and temperature limitations of optical molasses. In 10 ms we cool a sample of 3×108 cesium atoms to a temperature of 330 nK at a density of 1.1×1011 cm−3, which corresponds to a phase-space density nλdB3=1/500.We further propose to cool atoms or molecules inside an optical cavity that enhances the scattering of blue-detuned photons and show that the dissipative mechanism can be viewed as a cavity-induced generalized Doppler cooling. Since the cooling depends on the atom’s internal level structure only through the photon scattering rate, cavity Doppler cooling is applicable to particles that do not possess a closed optical transition, which may allow one to extend laser cooling to a greater class of atoms or molecules. Large samples are cooled at the same rate as single atoms if the effect of one atom on the cavity resonance frequency is small. We also show how to achieve 3D cooling with a single optical cavity.
We present a cooling method that should be generally applicable to atoms with narrow optical transitions. This technique uses velocity-selective pulses to drive atoms towards a zero-velocity dark state and then quenches the excited state to increase the cooling rate. We demonstrate this technique of quenched narrow-line cooling by reducing the 1D temperature of a sample of neutral 40Ca{}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}40Ca atoms. We cool selected velocities with the 1S0(4s2)3P1(4s4p){}^{1}{S}_{0}{(4s}^{2}{)}^{3}{P}_{1}(4s4p)1S0​(4s2)3P1​(4s4p) 657-nm intercombination line and quench with the 3P1(4s4p)1S0(4s5s){}^{3}{P}_{1}{(4s4p)}^{1}{S}_{0}(4s5s)3P1​(4s4p)1S0​(4s5s) intercombination line at 553 nm, which increases the cooling rate eightfold. Limited only by available quenching laser power, we have transferred 18% of the atoms from our initial 2-mK velocity distribution and achieved temperatures as low as 4 \ensuremath{\mu}K, corresponding to a vrms{v}_{\mathrm{rms}}vrms​ of 2.8 cm/s or 2 recoils at 657 nm. This cooling technique, which is closely related to Raman cooling, can be extended to three dimensions.