Absorption-induced trapping in an anisotropic magneto-optical trap

Absorption-induced trapping in an anisotropic magneto-optical trap.

We report on a simple anisotropic magneto-optical trap for neutral atoms that produces a large sample of cold atoms confined in a cylindrically-shaped volume with a high aspect ratio (100:1). Due to the large number of trapped atoms, the laser beams that propagate along the optically thick axis of the trap to cool the atoms are substantially attenuated. We demonstrate that the resulting intensi...

The dual frequency anisotropic Magneto-Optical Trap

The cloud of cold atoms produced by a Magneto-Optical Trap is known to exhibit instabilities. We examine in this paper in which limits it could be possible to realize an experimental trap similar to the configurations studied theoretically, i.e. mainly traps where one direction is privileged. We study the static behavior of an anisotropic trap, where anisotropy results essentially from the use ...

Constructing a Magneto-optical Trap for Cold Atom Trapping

Photon-trap spectroscopy of mass-selected ions in an ion trap: optical absorption and magneto-optical effects.

A novel experimental technique has been developed to observe a trace of optical absorption of free mass-selected ions. The technique combines a linear radio-frequency ion trap with a high-finesse optical cavity to perform cavity ring-down spectroscopy (photon-trap spectroscopy for generality), where the storage lifetime of photons in the cavity provides a sensitivity high enough to probe the tr...

Forbidden transitions in a magneto-optical trap.

We report the first observation of a nondipole transition in an ultracold atomic vapor. We excite the 3P-4P electric quadrupole (E2) transition in 23Na confined in a magneto-optical trap, and we demonstrate its application to high-resolution spectroscopy by making the first measurement of the hyperfine structure of the 4P(1/2) level and extracting the magnetic dipole constant A=30.6+/-0.1 MHz. ...