Doppler cooling and trapping on forbidden transitions.
Ultracold atoms at temperatures close to the recoil limit have been achieved by extending Doppler cooling to forbidden transitions. A cloud of (40)Ca atoms has been cooled and trapped to a temperature as low as 6 microK by operating a magnetooptical trap on the spin-forbidden intercombination transition. Quenching the long-lived excited state with an additional laser enhanced the scattering rate by a factor of 15, while a high selectivity in velocity was preserved. With this method, more than 10% of precooled atoms from a standard magnetooptical trap have been transferred to the ultracold trap. Monte Carlo simulations of the cooling process are in good agreement with the experiments.
Binnewies
T
T
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany.
Wilpers
G
G
Sterr
U
U
Riehle
F
F
Helmcke
J
J
Mehlstäubler
T E
TE
Rasel
E M
EM
Ertmer
W
W