Atomic fountain of laser-cooled Yb atoms for precision measurements

Abstract

We demonstrate launching of laser-cooled Yb atoms in a cold atomic fountain. Atoms in a collimated thermal beam are first cooled and captured in a magneto-optic trap (MOT) operating on the strongly-allowed ${{}^{1}S}_0\to {{}^{1}P}_1$ transition at 399~nm (blue line). They are then transferred to a MOT on the weakly-allowed ${{}^{1}S}_0\to {{}^{3}P}_1$ transition at 556~nm (green line). Cold atoms from the green MOT are launched against gravity at a velocity of around 2.5~m/s using a pair of green beams. We trap more than $10^7$ atoms in the blue MOT and transfer up to 70\% into the green MOT. The temperature for the odd isotope, ${}^{171}$Yb, is $\sim$1~mK in the blue MOT, and reduces by a factor of 40 in the green MOT.

6 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Degenerate Fermi Gases of Ytterbium
• Observation of a Large Atomic Parity Violation Effect in Ytterbium
• Laser cooling and trapping of Yb from a thermal source

Cited by in corpus (8)

• The Buffer Gas Beam: An Intense, Cold, and Slow Source for Atoms and Molecules
• Two-Color Magneto-Optical Trap with Small Magnetic Field for Ytterbium
• Observation of the nuclear magnetic octupole moment of ${}^{173}$Yb from precise measurements of hyperfine structure in the ${{}^{3}P}_2$ state
• Narrow-line cooling of ${}^{87}$Rb using 5S${}_{1/2}\to$ 6P${}_{3/2}$ open transition at 420 nm
• Continuous loading of magneto-optical trap of Rb at narrow transition
• Continuous beam of laser-cooled Yb atoms
• Role of spontaneously generated coherence (SGC) in laser cooling of atoms
• Generation of a cold pulsed beam of Rb atoms by transfer from a 3D magneto-optic trap