Continuous beam of laser-cooled Yb atoms

Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore 560012, India

^(a) vasant@physics.iisc.ernet.in

Received: 3 April 2013
Accepted: 16 May 2013

Abstract

We demonstrate the launching of laser-cooled Yb atoms in a continuous atomic beam. The continuous cold beam has significant advantages over the more-common pulsed fountain, which was also demonstrated by us recently. The cold beam is formed in the following steps: i) atoms from a thermal beam are first Zeeman-slowed to a small final velocity; ii) the slowed atoms are captured in a two-dimensional magneto-optic trap (2D-MOT); and iii) atoms are launched continuously in the vertical direction using two sets of moving-molasses beams, inclined at ±15° to the vertical. The cooling transition used is the strongly allowed transition at 399 nm. We capture about 7 × 10⁶ atoms in the 2D-MOT, and then launch them with a vertical velocity of 13 m/s at a longitudinal temperature of 125(6) mK.