Monday, February 27, 2012

Atomic structure necessary for magneto-optical trapping

As a accustomed atom has abounding bags of times the drive of a individual photon, the cooling of an atom have to absorb abounding absorption-spontaneous discharge cycles, with the atom accident up to ħk of momenta anniversary aeon . Because of this, if an atom is to be laser cooled, it have to acquire a specific activity akin anatomy accepted as a bankrupt optical loop, area afterward an excitation-spontaneous discharge event, the atom is consistently alternate to its aboriginal state. 85Rubidium, for example, has a bankrupt optical bend amid the 5S1/2 F=3 accompaniment and the 5P3/2 F=4 state. Once in the aflame state, the atom is banned from corrupt to any of the 5P1/2 states, which would not conserve parity, and is aswell banned from corrupt to the 5S1/2 F=2 state, which would crave an angular drive change of −2, which can not be supplied by a individual photon.

Many atoms that do not accommodate bankrupt optical loops can still be laser cooled, however, by application repump lasers which re-excite the citizenry aback into the optical bend afterwards it has addle to a accompaniment alfresco of the cooling cycle. The magneto-optical accoutrement of rubidium 85, for example, involves cycling on the bankrupt 5S1/2 F=3 → 5P3/2 F=4 transition. On excitation, however, the detuning all-important for cooling gives a small, but non-zero overlap with the 5P3/2 F=3 state. If an atom is aflame to this state, which occurs almost every thousand cycles, the atom is again chargeless to adulteration either the F=3, ablaze accompanying high hyperfine state, or the F=2 "dark" lower hyperfine state. If it avalanche aback to the aphotic state, the atom stops cycling amid arena and aflame state, and the cooling and accoutrement of this atom stops. A repump laser, which is beating with the 5S1/2 F=2 → 5P3/2 F=3 alteration is acclimated to recycle the citizenry aback into the optical bend so that cooling can continue.

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