High flux source of cold rubidium atoms

Abstract

We report the production of a continuous, slow, and cold beam of 87 Rb atoms with an unprecedented flux of 3.2 × 10 12 atoms/s and a temperature of a few milliKelvin. Hot atoms are emitted from a Rb candlestick atomic beam source and transversely cooled and collimated by a 20 cm long atomic collimator section, augmenting overall beam flux by a factor of 50. The atomic beam is then decelerated and longitudinally cooled by Zeeman slowing.

High-flux two-dimensional magneto-optical-trap source for cold lithium atoms

“…Therefore, the source is best operated at temperatures below 650 K, where the flux may be slightly smaller but the depletion time of the oven is comfortably long. Alternatively, one could incorporate a recycling principle [11,15].…”

“…The highest optically cooled atom fluxes to date have been produced from Zeeman-slowed atomic beams [10,11,12,14]. Zeeman slowers have the additional advantage of a wide applicability.…”

“…Zeeman slowers have the additional advantage of a wide applicability. Unfortunately, their use adds a substantial engineering effort to system design and construction, in particular if beam-brightening and recycling principles are involved [11,15]. The magnetic field inside the Zeeman slower must be very smooth and satisfy a particular profile in order to optimize the slowing.…”

Development of francium atomic beam for the search of the electron electric dipole moment

“…1 (b)). The transverse cooling is a kind of active collimation that ultimately reduces the transverse velocity of the atomic beam while preserving the total number of atoms [10]. In our case, the 33% of initial emittance of 100 mrad will be reduced to 9 mrad.…”

Slowing dynamics of a supersonic beam, simulation and experiments

“…Many papers have been dedicated to the behaviour of an atomic beam during the slowing process, but they all consider a special type of experiment, namely a standard atomic source providing an effusive thermal beam which is then collimated, and further slowed down by a Zeeman slower. Since the work of Blatt et al [2], numerical simulations have been performed as well as experimental investigations [10][11][12][13][14] with, in most cases, the goal of obtaining a high brilliance slowed beam able to efficiently load a magnetooptical trap. At the time of these previous works, computing capabilities were surely limited compared to what they are nowadays, which has led authors to develop remarkably efficient schemes aimed to handle by many aspects (if not exhaustively) atomic motion in light beams.…”