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Annual Meeting Optical Society of America

Cooling and trapping atoms using diode lasers

Carl Wieman

Published Jan 1, 1987• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

There has been considerable activity recently on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light. This work raises expectations that laser manipulation of atoms will be an important new tool for atomic physics. However, up to now, almost all the work has been on sodium atoms using light from dye lasers. The expense and complication of a narrowband dye laser system is a considerable limitation on the possible uses of this tool. In response to this we have been exploring the use of inexpensive diode lasers for the manipulation of atoms. We have found that diode lasers work very well for this purpose and even have some advantages over dye lasers in addition to cost and ease of use. We previously reported using light from diode lasers to stop a beam of atomic cesium. Here we discuss our more recent work using diode lasers to produce extremely cold cesium vapor via optical molasses cooling and the demonstration of a new type of optical trap. This is a purely optical spontaneous force trap which uses spatially inhomogeneous optical pumping to circumvent the optical Earnshaw theorem.

DOI
10.1364/oam.1987.wu1

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•May 21, 1990•0 citations
There has been considerable activity recently on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light. This work raises expectations that laser manipulation of atoms will be an important new tool for atomic physics. However, up to now, almost all the work has been on sodium atoms using light from dye lasers. The expense and complication of a narrowband dye laser system is a considerable limitation on the possible uses of this tool. In response to this we have been exploring the use of inexpensive diode lasers for the manipulation of atoms. We have found that diode lasers work very well for this purpose and even have some advantages over dye lasers in addition to cost and ease of use. We previously reported using light from diode lasers to stop a beam of atomic cesium. Here we discuss our more recent work using diode lasers to produce extremely cold cesium vapor via optical molasses cooling and the demonstration of a new type of optical trap. This is a purely optical spontaneous force trap which uses spatially inhomogeneous optical pumping to circumvent the optical Earnshaw theorem.
The use of light presure to cool and stop neutral atoms has been an area of considerable interest recently. Cooled neutral atoms are needed for a variety of interesting experiments involving neutral atom traps and ultrahigh-resolution spectroscopy. Laser cooling of sodium has previously been demonstrated using elegant but quite elaborate apparatus.1,2 These techniques employed stabilized dye lasers and a variety of additional sophisticated hardware. We have demonstrated that the frequency chirp technique of Ref. 2 can be implemented using inexpensive diode lasers and simple electronics.
We propose several ideas for neutral atom traps which utilize spontaneous light forces produced by static laser beams. Although the “optical Earnshaw theorem”1 would seem to prohibit such traps, the theorem does not apply if the proportionality constant between force and light intensity is made to vary with position. We suggest possible ways to accomplish this: Zeeman tuning the atom’s resonant frequency by applying a changing magnetic field; varying the quantization axis of the system via a magnetic field cork-screw; utilizing optical pumping effects which arise from matrix element imbalances between hyperfine sublevels in certain atoms. These traps are true in the sense that they provide a potential energy minimum in three dimensions, as well as dissipative cooling. Compared with gradient force light traps, these traps are many times deeper, a million times larger, and can be operated cw.
The development of laser cooling has an important impact on many aspects of atomic physics and quantum optics. The efforts to understand the various types of force exerted on atoms by laser light have led to some interesting physics and it is now possible for extremely cold clouds of atoms to be produced, which can be confined in atom traps or formed into very monoenergetic atomic beams. There are many new possibilities to explore in this ultra-cold regime where quantum effects are significant, in addition to the potential for great improvements in precision measurements made by r.f. and laser spectroscopy.