A reliable cw Lyman-α laser source for future cooling of antihydrogen

Abstract

We demonstrate a reliable continuous-wave (cw) laser source at the 1 S-2 P transition in (anti)hydrogen at 121.56 nm (Lyman-α) based on four-wave sum-frequency mixing in mercury. A two-photon resonance in the four-wave mixing scheme is essential for a powerful cw Lyman-α source and is well investigated.

Influence of the 6^1S_0-6^3P_1 Resonance on Continuous Lyman-alpha Generation in Mercury

“…The propagation of a non-Gaussian beam can be described with an embedded pure Gaussian beam with the same confocal parameter. The embedded Gaussian beams give the main contribution to the generated Lyman-α radiation [28]. This assumption gives good agreement with the measured data.…”

Rydberg excitation of trapped cold ions: a detailed case study

“…And even an efficiency of 150 µW/W 3 is achievable by using the 11 1 P state of mercury which corresponds to the 67P 3/2 state of 40 Ca + . For the calculation we took account of absorption of the VUV light in mercury vapor and imperfect fundamental beam qualities [63]. With moderate fundamental powers of 200 mW (UV), 300 mW (blue) and 3 W (green) we would get between 9 µW (n = 24) and 27 µW (n = 67).…”

The Production and Study of Cold Antiprotons and Antihydrogen

“…Starting in the Hänsch Laboratory in Garching, and then moving to the Walz Laboratory in Mainz, our collaborators continue to improve a source of Lyman alpha radiation suitable for laser cooling and for 1s-2p spectrosocpy [46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55]. Four-wave mixing is used to generate continuous, coherent Lyman alpha radiation at 121.5 nm.…”