Heidelberg 1999 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 32: Nichtlineare Optik IV

Q 32.5: Talk

Thursday, March 18, 1999, 15:15–15:30, PH3

Towards continuous Lyman-α laser cooling of antihydrogen — •K. S. E. Eikema, J. Walz, and T.W. H"ansch — Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, D-85748 Garching

The development of continuous coherent vacuum-ultraviolet (CW-VUV) sources is of great interest, especially for laser cooling and ’shelving’ spectroscopy of antihydrogen. The advantages of a continuous VUV source over the well established pulsed VUV sources include e.g. better duty cycle, narrower spectral bandwidth, and in some cases higher generation efficiency and effectiveness of the process that is driven with the VUV. Most of those advantages apply to Lyman-α (121.6 nm) laser cooling on the 1S-2P transition in antihydrogen. As a first experiment CW-VUV generation by four-wave-mixing (FWM) in magnesium vapour has been demonstrated near 123 nm and 172 nm. The 123 nm radiation represents the shortest wavelength made so far with CW-FWM. For 121.6 nm generation magnesium turned out to be not well suited due to phase-matching limitations. Therefore a new FWM scheme in mercury is now being investigated to generate exactly Lyman-α. Both the magnesium FWM experiment and the newly started mercury experiment will be reviewed.