An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Single-Stage Sub-Doppler Cooling of Alkaline Earth Atoms
Published
Author(s)
X Xu, T Loftus, J W. Dunn, C H. Greene, John L. Hall, Alan Gallagher, Jun Ye
Abstract
We report the first experimental study of sub-Doppler cooling in alkaline earth atoms (87Sr) enabled by the presence of nuclear spin-oriented magnetic gedeneracy in the atomic ground state. Sub-Doppler cooling in a ς+-ς- configuration is achieved despite the presence of multiple, closely spaced excited states. This surprising result is confirmed by an expanded mulit-level theory of the radiative cooling force. Detailed investigations of the cooling dynamics with respect to various experimental parameters such as cooling beam intensity, frequency detuning, and atomic number and density have revealed new insights to the heating mechanism in alkaline earth atoms. Our findings represent an important step twoards a complete understanding of the (ς+-ς-) cooling force and will play an important role in the future development of neutral atom based optical frequency standards.
Citation
Physical Review Letters
Volume
90
Issue
No. 19
Pub Type
Journals
Keywords
alkaline earth atoms, magneto-optical trap, optical frequency standards, sub-Doppler cooling
Citation
Xu, X.
, Loftus, T.
, Dunn, J.
, Greene, C.
, Hall, J.
, Gallagher, A.
and Ye, J.
(2003),
Single-Stage Sub-Doppler Cooling of Alkaline Earth Atoms, Physical Review Letters
(Accessed April 18, 2024)