Instability threshold in a large balanced magneto-optical trap

Abstract

Large clouds of cold atoms prepared in a magneto-optical trap can develop spatio-temporal instabilities when the frequency of the trapping lasers is brought close to the atomic resonance. This system bears close similarities with trapped plasmas, whereby effective Coulomb interactions are induced by the exchange of scattered photons and lead to collective nonlinear dynamics of the trapped atoms. We report in this paper a detailed experimental study of the instability threshold, and comparisons with three-dimensional simulations of the interacting, laser-driven cloud.

arXiv comment8 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Phase diagram of spatiotemporal instabilities in a large magneto-optical trap
• Three-dimensional simulations of spatiotemporal instabilities in a magneto-optical trap
• Analysing spatiotemporal instabilities in magneto-optical traps with the tools of turbulence theory
• AtomECS: Simulate laser cooling and magneto-optical traps
• Nonequilibrium steady state in a large magneto-optical trap
• A High-Flux Source of Cold Strontium with a Loading Rate of $4\times 10^{10}$ atoms/s for Open Release