Efficient cooling and trapping of strontium atoms

I Courtillot; A Quessada; R P Kovacich; J J Zondy; A Landragin; A Clairon; P Lemonde

doi:10.1364/ol.28.000468

Efficient cooling and trapping of strontium atoms

Opt Lett. 2003 Mar 15;28(6):468-70. doi: 10.1364/ol.28.000468.

Authors

I Courtillot¹, A Quessada, R P Kovacich, J J Zondy, A Landragin, A Clairon, P Lemonde

Affiliation

¹ Bureau National de Métrologie-Systèmes de Référence Temps Espace, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 8630, Observatoire de Paris, 61 Avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France.

PMID: 12659282
DOI: 10.1364/ol.28.000468

Abstract

We report the capture of cold strontium atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) at a rate of 4 x 10(10) atoms/s. The MOT is loaded from an atomic beam decelerated by a Zeeman slower operating with a focused laser beam. The 461-nm laser, used for both cooling and trapping, was generated by sum-frequency mixing in a KTP crystal with diode lasers at 813 nm and a Nd:YAG laser at 1064 nm. As much as 115 mW of blue light was obtained.