Sub-Doppler cooling of ytterbium with the ${}^1{S}_0$-${}^1{P}_1$ transition including ${}^{171}$Yb (I=1/2)

Abstract

We report on the sub-Doppler laser cooling of neutral ${}^{171}$Yb and ${}^{173}$Yb in a magneto-optical trap using the ${}^1{S}_0$-${}^1{P}_1$ transition at 398.9nm. We use two independent means to estimate the temperature of the atomic cloud for several of the Yb isotopes. The two methods of MOT-cloud-imaging and release-and-recapture show consistency with one another. Temperatures below 400$\mu$K and 200$\mu$K are recorded for ${}^{171}$Yb and ${}^{173}$Yb, respectively, while ~1mK is measured for both ${}^{172}$Yb and ${}^{174}$Yb. By comparison, the associated 1D Doppler cooling temperature limit is 694$\mu$K. The sub-Doppler cooling of the I=1/2 ${}^{171}$Yb isotope in a ${\sigma }^{+}-{\sigma }^{-}$ light-field trap adds further evidence that the Sisyphus cooling mechanism is occurring in such 3D magneto-optical traps.

14 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (3)

• One-Dimensional Optical Lattice Clock with a Fermionic 171Yb Isotope
• Scattering lengths in isotopologues of the RbYb system
• Spin-1/2 Optical Lattice Clock

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Anomalous statistics of laser-cooled atoms in dissipative optical lattices
• Inverted crossover resonance aiding laser cooling of ${}^{171}$Yb
• Clock and inter-combination line frequency separation in ${}^{171}$Yb
• Spectroscopy and laser cooling on the ${}^1{S}_0-{}^3{P}_1$ line in Yb via an injection-locked diode laser at 1111.6nm
• Intercombination line frequencies in ${}^{171}$Yb validated with the clock transition
• Fourier transform detection of weak optical transitions with cyclic routines
• Single-atom imaging of ${}^{173}$Yb in optical tweezers loaded by a five-beam magneto-optical trap