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Single-Photon Atomic Cooling - Raizen Lab - The University of ...

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samples by allowing for very long interaction times and a suppression <strong>of</strong> the<br />

Doppler effect (including time dilation). Cooled atoms with sufficiently long<br />

deBroglie wavelengths are <strong>of</strong> use in atom interferometers which can function<br />

as accelerometers, rotation sensors, gravimeters, and gradiometers. While this<br />

list is in no way exhaustive, it is merely to justify the incredibly important<br />

contribution laser cooling has provided to the scientific community.<br />

1.3 Limitations <strong>of</strong> Laser <strong>Cooling</strong><br />

While the contributions <strong>of</strong> atomic laser cooling are substantial, no tech-<br />

nique is without limitation. <strong>The</strong> major limitation <strong>of</strong> established atomic laser<br />

cooling techniques is that they rely on the transfer <strong>of</strong> momentum from photon<br />

to atom to work. This seemingly trivial statement places quite stringent re-<br />

quirements on atomic species amenable to these techniques. As a first step in<br />

seeing why, consider the number <strong>of</strong> scattering events necessary to stop a room<br />

temperature 87 Rb atom with photons resonant with its D2 transition. We can<br />

approximate this number as m¯v/k ≈ 45, 000 where m and ¯v are the mass<br />

and velocity <strong>of</strong> a 87 Rb atom at 300K and where k = 2π/780 nm. From this<br />

consideration it is clear that a very large number <strong>of</strong> photon scattering events<br />

are necessary to stop a room temperature atom. In order to scatter such a<br />

large number <strong>of</strong> photons in an experimentally realizable way the atom must<br />

possess an effective two-level structure, depicted in Fig.1.1, that is accessible<br />

with a sufficiently intense available laser source.<br />

<strong>The</strong> reason an effective two-level atom is required for laser cooling is<br />

5

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