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arXiv:physics/0404012 · Physical Review A

Deeply subrecoil two-dimensional Raman cooling

Vincent Boyer, L. J. Lising, S. L. Rolston, William D. Phillips

Published Oct 14, 2004• 22 citations
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Abstract

We report the implementation of a two-dimensional Raman cooling scheme using sequential excitations along the orthogonal axes. Using square pulses, we have cooled a cloud of ultracold cesium atoms down to an rms velocity spread of 0.39(5) recoil velocities, corresponding to an effective transverse temperature of $30\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nK}$ $(0.15{T}_{\mathrm{rec}})$. This technique can be useful to improve cold-atom atomic clocks and is particularly relevant for clocks in microgravity.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.70.043405

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We report the implementation of a two-dimensional Raman cooling scheme using sequential excitations along the orthogonal axes. Using square pulses, we have cooled a cloud of ultracold cesium atoms down to an rms velocity spread of 0.39(5) recoil velocities, corresponding to an effective transverse temperature of 30nK30\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nK}30nK (0.15Trec)(0.15{T}_{\mathrm{rec}})(0.15Trec​). This technique can be useful to improve cold-atom atomic clocks and is particularly relevant for clocks in microgravity.
We use velocity-selective Raman pulses generated by two diode lasers to cool cesium atoms in 1 dimension to an r.m.s. of 1.2 mm/s. This is about 1/3 of the single-photon recoil velocity v rec = ℏk/M , where ℏk is the photon momentum and M the atom's mass. The corresponding effective temperature is a factor of 9 below the single-photon recoil temperature given by k B T rec /2 = 1/2 Mv rec 2 . Because of the high cesium mass, this temperature is only (23 ± 5) nanokelvin, the lowest 1D kinetic temperature reported to date.
Subrecoil Raman laser cooling of lt;suplt;suplt;supgt;6lt;/suplt;/suplt;/supgt;Li atoms
We realize an efficient one-dimensional Raman cooling of 6Li atoms using 2S→2P Raman transition pulses and 2S→3P ultraviolet (UV) optical repumping. In this cooling scheme, we directly cool an initial cold atomic sample of 350 μK released from a standard magneto-optical trap down to a velocity spread of 0.8 recoil velocity, corresponding to an effective temperature of 4.5 μK, an increase of almost an order of magnitude in the phase space density with respect to ordinary laser sub-Doppler cooling. This technique may provide an ideal initial sub-recoil atomic sample for the application of the large-momentum-transfer in the recoil-sensitive lithium atom interferometers.
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We present an efficient method for subrecoil cooling of neutral atoms by applying Raman cooling in two dimensions to a four-level tripod system. The atoms can be cooled simultaneously in two directions using only three laser beams. We describe the cooling process with a simple model showing that the momentum distribution can be rapidly narrowed to velocity spread down to 0.1vrec0.1{v}_{\mathrm{rec}}0.1vrec​, corresponding to effective temperature equal to 0.01Trec0.01{T}_{\mathrm{rec}}0.01Trec​. This method opens new possibilities for cooling of neutral atoms.
We present a new approach to optimize subrecoil Raman cooling, based on L\'evy flight statistics. It shows that simple time sequences using square pulses can lead to very efficient cooling. We tested the method in a one-dimensional experiment with cesium atoms and obtained temperatures below 3 nK, less than 170\frac{1}{70}701​ of the single photon recoil temperature.
We report the first observation of subrecoil laser cooling in two dimensions by velocity selective coherent population trapping. We have compressed the momentum distribution of a cloud of trapped metastable helium atoms along two orthogonal axes to $\ensuremath{\delta}p=\frac{\ensuremath{\hbar}k}{4}$, where $\ensuremath{\hbar}k$ is the photon momentum. The corresponding temperature, 16 times below the single-photon recoil temperature, is 250 nK. Atoms are pumped into a nonabsorbing state exhibiting four well-resolved momentum peaks with subrecoil widths. The momentum space density in the peaks is significantly greater than that in the uncooled distribution.