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Long-range gravitational-like interaction in a neutral atomic cold gas

Maryvonne Chalony, Julien Barré, B. Marcos, Alain Olivetti, David Wilkowski

Published Jan 2, 2013• 0 citations
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Abstract

A quasi-resonant laser induces a long-range attractive force within a cloud of cold atoms. We take advantage of this force to build in the laboratory a system of particles with a one-dimensional gravitational-like interaction, at a fluid level of modeling. We give experimental evidences of such an interaction in a cold Strontium gas, studying the density profile of the cloud, its size as a function of the number of atoms, and its breathing oscillations.

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A quasi-resonant laser induces a long-range attractive force within a cloud of cold atoms. We take advantage of this force to build in the laboratory a system of particles with a one-dimensional gravitational-like interaction, at a fluid level of modeling. We give experimental evidences of such an interaction in a cold Strontium gas, studying the density profile of the cloud, its size as a function of the number of atoms, and its breathing oscillations.
A quasi-resonant laser induces a long-range attractive force within a cloud of cold atoms. We take advantage of this force to build in the laboratory a system of particles with a one-dimensional gravitational-like interaction, at a fluid level of modeling. We give experimental evidences of such an interaction in a cold Strontium gas, studying the density profile of the cloud, its size as a function of the number of atoms, and its breathing oscillations. PACS numbers: 37.10.De, 05.20.Jj, 04.80.Cc, 37.10.Gh,04.40.-b
In two dimensions, a system of self-gravitating particles collapses and forms a singularity in finite time below a critical temperature Tc{T}_{c}Tc​. We investigate experimentally a quasi-two-dimensional cloud of cold neutral atoms in interaction with two pairs of perpendicular counterpropagating quasiresonant laser beams, in order to look for a signature of this ideal phase transition: indeed, the radiation pressure forces exerted by the laser beams can be viewed as an anisotropic, and nonpotential, generalization of two-dimensional self-gravity. We first show that our experiment operates in a parameter range which should be suitable to observe the collapse transition. However, the experiment unveils only a moderate compression instead of a phase transition between the two phases. A three-dimensional numerical simulation shows that both the finite small thickness of the cloud, which induces a competition between the effective gravity force and the repulsive force due to multiple scattering, and the atomic losses due to heating in the third dimension contribute to smearing the transition.
We study the long-range force arising from the absorption of non-saturating laser beams in a two-dimensional cloud of cold atoms. The force created by the lasers is attractive and similar to the usual Newtonian gravity along the beam. The cloud is composed of bosonic strontium 88 cooled and trapped on the intercombination line. Transferring the atoms in a two-dimensional optical dipole trap in a magical wavelength configuration, a canonical non-equilibrium phase transition is expected. Below a critical temperature, selfgravitating particles in two dimensions can collapse, nearly by the same mechanism stars are forming. We observed experimentally transient compressions, a halfway satisfactory result originating from the power limitation of our dipole trap. The second part of the thesis focuses on the theoretical realization a minimal Brownian motor within a system of trapped particles in 2D, similarly to our experimental situation. The phenomenon characterizing the Brownian motor is the appearance of a macroscopic current of particles. We have shown that this direct transport of particles is independent of the details of the trapping potential and obtained if and only if two symmetries are jointly broken: By the presence of two heat baths along orthogonal directions together and an anisotropic trap misaligned from the temperature axes.
We demonstrate experimentally the generation of one-dimensional cold gases of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms by diffuse laser cooling. A horizontal slender vacuum glass tube with a length of 105 cm and diameter of 2 cm is used in our experiment. The diffuse laser light inside the tube, which is generated by multireflection of injected lasers, cools the background vapor atoms. With 250 mW of cooling light and 50 mW of repumping light, an evenly distributed 1-m-long profile of cold atom cloud is obtained. We observe a factor 4 improvement in the atomic optical density for a typical cooling duration of 170 ms and a sub-Doppler atomic temperature of 25 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$. The central number of detected cold atoms remains constant for a free-fall duration of 30 ms. Such samples are ideal for many quantum optical experiments involving electromagnetically induced transparency, electronically highly excited (Rydberg) atoms, and quantum precision measurements.