Rostock 2019 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 2: Ultra-cold atoms and molecules I (joint session A/MO/Q)

A 2.3: Talk

Monday, March 11, 2019, 11:00–11:15, S HS 1 Physik

Sisyphus Optical Lattice Decelerator (SOLD) — •Rodrigo Gonzalez Escudero, Chun-Chia Chen, Shayne Bennetts, Benjamin Pasquiou, and Florian Schreck — Van der Waals - Zeeman Institute, Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam

In this talk, we present our implementation of a novel deceleration scheme that slows and cools atoms without using radiation pressure [1]. This scheme can enhance the efficiency of standard laser cooling techniques, requiring fewer photons to bring fast atoms to rest, making it a good decelerator candidate for exotic species [2] and molecules.

The SOLD works by having atoms selectively excited to an electronic state whose energy is spatially modulated by an optical lattice. Excited Atoms decelerate solely by climbing the conservative potential landscape created by the lattice. The ensuing spontaneous decay brings atoms to the ground state, and completes one Sisyphus cooling cycle.

This deceleration method might prove useful for our attempt to create a steady-state strontium atom laser machine [3], breaching the gap from the currently achieved, and unprecedented steady-state phase-space density of near unity to the first steady-state Bose-Einstein condensate from which a continuous atom laser can be outcoupled.

[1] C-C.Chen et al., arXiv:1810.07157 (2018).

[2] S. Wu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 213001 (2011).

[3] S. Bennetts et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 223202 (2017).