Doppler cooling and trapping on forbidden transitions
Atomic Physics
2015-11-30 v1
Abstract
Ultracold atoms at temperatures close to the recoil limit have been achieved by extending Doppler cooling to forbidden transitions. A cloud of ^40Ca atoms has been cooled and trapped to a temperature as low as 6 \mu K by operating a magneto-optical trap on the spin-forbidden intercombination transition. Quenching the long-lived excited state with an additional laser enhanced the scattering rate by a factor of 15, while a high selectivity in velocity was preserved. With this method more than 10% of pre-cooled atoms from a standard magneto-optical trap have been transferred to the ultracold trap. Monte-Carlo simulations of the cooling process are in good agreement with the experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0105069,
title = {Doppler cooling and trapping on forbidden transitions},
author = {T. Binnewies and G. Wilpers and U. Sterr and F. Riehle and J. Helmcke and T. E. Mehlstäubler and E. M. Rasel and W. Ertmer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0105069},
year = {2015}
}