Quantitative simulation of a magneto-optical trap operating near the photon recoil limit

Abstract

We present a quantitative model for magneto-optical traps operating on narrow transitions, where the transition linewidth and the recoil shift are comparable. We combine a quantum treatment of the light scattering process with a Monte-Carlo simulation of the atomic motion. By comparing our model to an experiment operating on the $5{\mathrm{s}}^2{}^1{\mathrm{S}}_0\to 5\mathrm{s}5\mathrm{p}{}^3{\mathrm{P}}_1$ transition in strontium, we show that it quantitatively reproduces the cloud size, position, temperature and dynamics over a wide range of operating conditions, without any adjustable parameters. We also present an extension of the model that quantitatively reproduces the transfer of atoms into a far off-resonance dipole trap (FORT), highlighting its use as a tool for optimising complex cold atom experiments.

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• Magneto-optical trapping of diatomic molecules
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• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Strontium
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• An Atom Faucet
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• Multiparameter optimisation of a magneto-optical trap using deep learning
• A Sideband-Enhanced Cold Atomic Source For Optical Clocks
• A Rydberg-dressed Magneto-Optical Trap
• PyLCP: A python package for computing laser cooling physics
• Measurement of the strontium triplet Rydberg series by depletion spectroscopy of ultracold atoms
• Three-dimensional simulations of spatiotemporal instabilities in a magneto-optical trap
• atomSmltr: a modular Python package to simulate laser cooling setups