We propose to use a three-step transverse and longitudinal cooling scheme, to compress and collimate a strongly diverging flow of metastable rare gas atoms. Simulations show that an atom beam flux of 10 10 8-1 in a small diameter «1 mm), well-collimated (divergence <10 mrad), slow (50 ms-1 ) atomic beam could be achieved. This technique can be extremely valuable in many areas of atomic physics, e.g. in (electron) spectroscopy and atomic collision physics where high beam densities are desirable.
We describe a high flux source of cold (80 K) metastable helium atoms. The source employs a direct current nozzle discharge which produces in excess of 1015 atoms/steradian/s. Liquid nitrogen cooling of the discharge source yields atomic velocities below 900 ms−1. Such a source has practical applications for experiments concerned with laser cooling and trapping of metastable helium atoms.
We report the construction of a low pressure (∼0.5 Torr) helium direct current discharge cell to lock a 1083 nm InGaAs diode laser to the 2 3S–2 3P transition in helium using saturated absorption spectroscopy. The direct current discharge cell has the advantage of being radio frequency noise free.
A novel mirror arrangement that enables large interaction lengths between atomic beams and laser fields by use of a small amount of laser power is presented. Its application to focusing and compression of neutral atomic beams is discussed.
We report on several complementary methods for improving the stability of a free running diode laser. We were primarily concerned with: (a) the construction of a stable power supply to reduce the main frequency and rf noise, and (b) long term drift of the laser frequency, for which we have developed a lock-in amplifier to be combined with a simple proportional-integrating circuit. While we have kept everything simple and inexpensive to construct, the stability is comparable with that of far more expensive, commercially available systems. Development and testing of our stabilization scheme was done on the distributed Bragg reflector diode lasers for use in a range of atomic collision and atom optics experiments, but it is applicable to all diode lasers, and can be used in a large range of atomic physics experiments.
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