English

Achieving very long lifetimes in optical lattices with pulsed cooling

Atomic Physics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

We have realized a one dimensional optical lattice for individual atoms with a lifetime >300 s, which is 5 times longer than previously reported. In order to achieve this long lifetime, it is necessary to laser cool the at-oms briefly every 20 s to overcome heating due to technical fluctuations in the trapping potential. Without cooling, we observe negligible atom loss within the first 20 s followed by an exponential decay with a 62 s time constant. We obtain quantitative agreement with the measured fluctuations of the trapping potential and the corresponding theoretical heating rates.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0805.2937,
  title  = {Achieving very long lifetimes in optical lattices with pulsed cooling},
  author = {Michael J. Gibbons and Soo Y. Kim and Kevin M. Fortier and Peyman Ahmadi and Michael S. Chapman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.2937},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 5 figures