Doppler cooling and trapping on forbidden transitions

Ultracold atoms at temperatures close to the recoil limit have been achieved by extending Doppler cooling to forbidden transitions. A cloud of (40)Ca atoms has been cooled and trapped to a temperature as low as 6 microK by operating a magnetooptical trap on the spin-forbidden intercombination transi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2001-09, Vol.87 (12), p.123002-123002, Article 123002
Main Authors: Binnewies, T, Wilpers, G, Sterr, U, Riehle, F, Helmcke, J, Mehlstäubler, T E, Rasel, E M, Ertmer, W
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Ultracold atoms at temperatures close to the recoil limit have been achieved by extending Doppler cooling to forbidden transitions. A cloud of (40)Ca atoms has been cooled and trapped to a temperature as low as 6 microK by operating a magnetooptical 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 precooled atoms from a standard magnetooptical trap have been transferred to the ultracold trap. Monte Carlo simulations of the cooling process are in good agreement with the experiments.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.123002