A Rydberg-dressed Magneto-Optical Trap
Atomic Physics
2018-05-09 v1
Abstract
We propose and demonstrate the laser cooling and trapping of Rydberg-dressed Sr atoms. By off-resonantly coupling the excited state of a narrow (7 kHz) cooling transition to a high-lying Rydberg state, we transfer Rydberg properties such as enhanced electric polarizability to a stable magneto-optical trap operating at . By increasing the density to , we show that it is possible to reach a regime where the long-range interaction between Rydberg-dressed atoms becomes comparable to the kinetic energy, opening a route to combining laser cooling with tunable long-range interactions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1801.03846,
title = {A Rydberg-dressed Magneto-Optical Trap},
author = {A. D. Bounds and N. C. Jackson and R. K. Hanley and R. Faoro and E. M. Bridge and P. Huillery and M. P. A. Jones},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.03846},
year = {2018}
}