Laser cooling includes several techniques where atoms, molecules, and small mechanical systems are cooled with laser light. The directed energy of lasers is often associated with heating materials, e.g. laser cutting, so it can be counterintuitive that laser cooling often results in sample temperatures approaching absolute zero. It is a routine step in many atomic physics experiments where the laser-cooled atoms are then subsequently manipulated and measured, or in technologies, such as atom-based quantum computing architectures. Laser cooling relies on the change in momentum when an object, such as an atom, absorbs and re-emits a photon (a particle of light). For example, if laser light illuminates a warm cloud of atoms from all directions and the laser's frequency is tuned below an atomic resonance, the atoms will be cooled. This common type of laser cooling relies on the Doppler effect where individual atoms will preferentially absorb laser light from the direction opposite to the atom's motion. The absorbed light is re-emitted by the atom in a random direction. After repeated emission and absorption of light the net effect on the cloud of atoms is that they will expand more slowly. The slower expansion reflects a decrease in the velocity distribution of the atoms, which corresponds to a lower temperature and therefore the atoms have been cooled. For an ensemble of particles, their thermodynamic temperature is proportional to the variance in their velocity, therefore the lower the distribution of velocities, the lower temperature of the particles.
The 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Steven Chu, and William Daniel Phillips "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light". [1]
Radiation pressure is the force that electromagnetic radiation exerts on matter. In 1873 Maxwell published his treatise on electromagnetism in which he predicted radiation pressure. [2] The force was experimentally demonstrated for the first time by Lebedev and reported at a conference in Paris in 1900, [3] and later published in more detail in 1901. [4] Following Lebedev's measurements Nichols and Hull also demonstrated the force of radiation pressure in 1901, [5] with a refined measurement reported in 1903. [6] [7]
Atoms and molecules have bound states and transitions can occur between these states in the presence of light. Sodium is historically notable because it has a strong transition at 589 nm, a wavelength which is close to the peak sensitivity of the human eye. This made it easy to see the interaction of light with sodium atoms. In 1933, Otto Frisch deflected an atomic beam of sodium atoms with light. [8] This was the first realization of radiation pressure acting on an atom or molecule.
The introduction of lasers in atomic physics experiments was the precursor to the laser cooling proposals in the mid 1970s. Laser cooling was proposed separately in 1975 by two different research groups: Hänsch and Schawlow, [9] and Wineland and Dehmelt. [10] Both proposals outlined the simplest laser cooling process, known as Doppler cooling, where laser light tuned below an atom's resonant frequency is preferentially absorbed by atoms moving towards the laser and after absorption a photon is emitted in a random direction. This process is repeated many times and in a configuration with counterpropagating laser cooling light the velocity distribution of the atoms is reduced. [11]
In 1977 Ashkin submitted a paper which describes how Doppler cooling could be used to provide the necessary damping to load atoms into an optical trap. [12] In this work he emphasized how this could allow for long spectroscopic measurements which would increase precision because the atoms would be held in place. He also discussed overlapping optical traps to study interactions between different atoms.
Following the laser cooling proposals, in 1978 two research groups that Wineland, Drullinger and Walls of NIST, and Neuhauser, Hohenstatt, Toscheck and Dehmelt of the University of Washington succeeded in laser cooling atoms. The NIST group wanted to reduce the effect of Doppler broadening on spectroscopy. They cooled magnesium ions in a Penning trap to below 40 K. The Washington group cooled barium ions. The research from both groups served to illustrate the mechanical properties of light. [11]
Influenced by the Wineland's work on laser cooling ions, William Phillips applied the same principles to laser cool neutral atoms. In 1982, he published the first paper where neutral atoms were laser cooled. [13] The process used is now known as the Zeeman slower and is a standard technique for slowing an atomic beam.
The Doppler cooling limit for electric dipole transitions is typically in the hundreds of microkelvins. In the 1980s this limit was seen as the lowest achievable temperature. It was a surprise then when sodium atoms were cooled to 43 microkelvin when their Doppler cooling limit is 240 microkelvin, [14] this unforeseen low temperature was explained by considering the interaction of polarized laser light with more atomic states and transitions. Previous conceptions of laser cooling were decided to have been too simplistic. [15] The major laser cooling breakthroughs in the 70s and 80s led to several improvements to preexisting technology and new discoveries with temperatures just above absolute zero. The cooling processes were utilized to make atomic clocks more accurate and to improve spectroscopic measurements, and led to the observation of a new state of matter at ultracold temperatures. [16] [15] The new state of matter, the Bose–Einstein condensate, was observed in 1995 by Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle. [17]
Most laser cooling experiments bring the atoms close to at rest in the laboratory frame, but cooling of relativistic atoms has also been achieved, where the effect of cooling manifests as a narrowing of the velocity distribution. In 1990, a group at JGU successfully laser-cooled a beam of 7Li+ at 13.3 MeV in a storage ring [18] from 260 K to lower than 2.9 K, using two counter-propagating lasers addressing the same transition, but at 514.5 nm and 584.8 nm, respectively, to compensate for the large Doppler shift.
Laser cooling of antimatter has also been demonstrated, first in 2021 by the ALPHA collaboration on antihydrogen atoms. [19]
Molecules are significantly more challenging to laser cool than atoms because molecules have vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom. These extra degrees of freedom result in more energy levels that can be populated from excited state decays, requiring more lasers compared to atoms to address the more complex level structure. Vibrational decays are particularly challenging because there are no symmetry rules that restrict the vibrational states that can be populated.
In 2010, a team at Yale successfully laser-cooled a diatomic molecule. [20] In 2016, a group at MPQ successfully cooled formaldehyde to 420 μK via optoelectric Sisyphus cooling. [21] In 2022, a group at Harvard successfully laser cooled and trapped CaOH to 720(40) μK in a magneto-optical trap. [22]
Starting in the 2000s, laser cooling was applied to small mechanical systems, ranging from small cantilevers to the mirrors used in the LIGO observatory. These devices are connected to a larger substrate, such as a mechanical membrane attached to a frame, or they are held in optical traps, in both cases the mechanical system is a harmonic oscillator. Laser cooling reduces the random vibrations of the mechanical oscillator, removing thermal phonons from the system.
In 2007, an MIT team successfully laser-cooled a macro-scale (1 gram) object to 0.8 K. [23] In 2011, a team from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Vienna became the first to laser-cool a (10 μm × 1 μm) mechanical object to its quantum ground state. [24]
The first example of laser cooling, and also still the most common method (so much so that it is still often referred to simply as 'laser cooling') is Doppler cooling.
1 | A stationary atom sees the laser neither red- nor blue-shifted and does not absorb the photon. |
---|---|
2 | An atom moving away from the laser sees it red-shifted and does not absorb the photon. |
31 | An atom moving towards the laser sees it blue-shifted and absorbs the photon, slowing the atom. |
32 | The photon excites the atom, moving an electron to a higher quantum state. |
33 | The atom re-emits a photon but in a random direction. The atom momentum vectors would add to the original if they were in the same direction but they are not so the atom has lost energy and, therefore, cooled. |
Doppler cooling, which is usually accompanied by a magnetic trapping force to give a magneto-optical trap, is by far the most common method of laser cooling. It is used to cool low density gases down to the Doppler cooling limit, which for rubidium-85 is around 150 microkelvins.
In Doppler cooling, initially, the frequency of light is tuned slightly below an electronic transition in the atom. Because the light is detuned to the "red" (i.e., at lower frequency) of the transition, the atoms will absorb more photons if they move towards the light source, due to the Doppler effect. Thus if one applies light from two opposite directions, the atoms will always scatter more photons from the laser beam pointing opposite to their direction of motion. In each scattering event the atom loses a momentum equal to the momentum of the photon. If the atom, which is now in the excited state, then emits a photon spontaneously, it will be kicked by the same amount of momentum, but in a random direction. Since the initial momentum change is a pure loss (opposing the direction of motion), while the subsequent change is random, the probable result of the absorption and emission process is to reduce the momentum of the atom, and therefore its speed —provided its initial speed was larger than the recoil speed from scattering a single photon. If the absorption and emission are repeated many times, the average speed, and therefore the kinetic energy of the atom, will be reduced. Since the temperature of a group of atoms is a measure of the average random internal kinetic energy, this is equivalent to cooling the atoms.
Other methods of laser cooling include:
Laser cooling is very common in the field of atomic physics. Reducing the random motion of atoms has several benefits, including the ability to trap atoms with optical or magnetic fields. Spectroscopic measurements of a cold atomic sample will also have reduced systematic uncertainties due to thermal motion.
Often multiple laser cooling techniques are used in a single experiment to prepare a cold sample of atoms, which is then subsequently manipulated and measured. In a representative experiment a vapor of strontium atoms is generated in a hot oven that exit the oven as an atomic beam. After leaving the oven the atoms are Doppler cooled in two dimensions transverse to their motion to reduce loss of atoms due to divergence of the atomic beam. The atomic beam is then slowed and cooled with a Zeeman slower to optimize the atom loading efficiency into a magneto-optical trap (MOT), which Doppler cools the atoms, that operates on the 1S0 → 1P1 with lasers at 461 nm. The MOT transitions from using light at 461 nm to using light at 689 nm to drive the 1S0 → 3P1, which is a narrow transition, to realize even colder atoms. The atoms are then transferred into an optical dipole trap where evaporative cooling gets them to temperatures where they can be effectively loaded into an optical lattice.
Laser cooling is important for quantum computing efforts based on neutral atoms and trapped atomic ions. In an ion trap Doppler cooling reduces the random motion of the ions so they form a well-ordered crystal structure in the trap. After Doppler cooling the ions are often cooled to their motional ground state to reduce decoherence during quantum gates between ions.
Laser cooling atoms (and molecules especially) requires specialized experimental equipment that when assembled forms a cold atom machine. Such a machine generally consists of two parts: a vacuum chamber which houses the laser cooled atoms and the laser systems used for cooling, as well as for preparing and manipulating atomic states and detecting the atoms.
In order for atoms to be laser cooled, the atoms cannot collide with room temperature background gas particles. Such collisions will drastically heat the atoms, and knock them out of weak traps. Acceptable collision rates for cold atom machines typically require vacuum pressures at 10−9 Torr, and very often hundreds or even thousands of times lower pressures are necessary. To achieve these low pressures, a vacuum chamber is needed. The vacuum chamber typically includes windows so that the atoms can be addressed with lasers (e.g. for laser cooling) and light emitted by the atoms or absorption of light be the atoms can be detected. The vacuum chamber also requires an atomic source for the atom(s) to be laser cooled. The atomic source is generally heated to produce thermal atoms that can be laser cooled. For ion trapping experiments the vacuum system must also hold the ion trap, with the appropriate electric feedthroughs for the trap. Neutral atom systems very often employ a Magneto-optical trap (MOT) as one of the early stages in collecting and cooling atoms. For a MOT typically magnetic field coils are placed outside of the vacuum chamber to generate magnetic field gradients for the MOT.
The lasers required for cold atom machines are entirely dependent on the choice of atom. Each atom has unique electronic transitions at very distinct wavelengths that must be driven for the atom to be laser cooled. Rubidium, for example is a very commonly used atom which requires driving two transitions with laser light at 780 nm that are separated by a few GHz. The light for rubidium can be generated from a signal laser at 780 nm and an Electro-optic modulator. Generally tens of mW (and often hundreds of mW to cool significantly more atoms) is used to cool neutral atoms. Trapped ions on the other hand require microwatts of optical power, as they are generally tightly confined and the laser light can be focused to a small spot size. The strontium ion, for example requires light at both 422 nm and 1092 nm in order to be Doppler cooled. Because of the small Doppler shifts involved with laser cooling, very narrow lasers, order of a few MHz, are required for laser cooling. Such lasers are generally stabilized to spectroscopy reference cells, optical cavities, or sometimes wavemeters so the laser light can be precisely tuned relative to the atomic transitions.
Ionization is the process by which an atom or a molecule acquires a negative or positive charge by gaining or losing electrons, often in conjunction with other chemical changes. The resulting electrically charged atom or molecule is called an ion. Ionization can result from the loss of an electron after collisions with subatomic particles, collisions with other atoms, molecules, electrons, positrons, protons, antiprotons and ions, or through the interaction with electromagnetic radiation. Heterolytic bond cleavage and heterolytic substitution reactions can result in the formation of ion pairs. Ionization can occur through radioactive decay by the internal conversion process, in which an excited nucleus transfers its energy to one of the inner-shell electrons causing it to be ejected.
Optical tweezers are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and move microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nanoparticles and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers. If the object is held in air or vacuum without additional support, it can be called optical levitation.
Resolved sideband cooling is a laser cooling technique allowing cooling of tightly bound atoms and ions beyond the Doppler cooling limit, potentially to their motional ground state. Aside from the curiosity of having a particle at zero point energy, such preparation of a particle in a definite state with high probability (initialization) is an essential part of state manipulation experiments in quantum optics and quantum computing.
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is a coherent optical nonlinearity which renders a medium transparent within a narrow spectral range around an absorption line. Extreme dispersion is also created within this transparency "window" which leads to "slow light", described below. It is in essence a quantum interference effect that permits the propagation of light through an otherwise opaque atomic medium.
An atom interferometer uses the wave-like nature of atoms in order to produce interference. In atom interferometers, the roles of matter and light are reversed compared to the laser based interferometers, i.e. the beam splitter and mirrors are lasers while the source emits matter waves rather than light. Atom interferometers measure the difference in phase between atomic matter waves along different paths. Matter waves are controlled and manipulated using systems of lasers. Atom interferometers have been used in tests of fundamental physics, including measurements of the gravitational constant, the fine-structure constant, and universality of free fall. Applied uses of atom interferometers include accelerometers, rotation sensors, and gravity gradiometers.
In physics, atomic coherence is the induced coherence between levels of a multi-level atomic system and an electromagnetic field.
In condensed matter physics and atomic physics, the recoil temperature is a fundamental lower limit of temperature attainable by some laser cooling schemes. When an atom decays from an excited electronic state at rest to a lower energy electronic state by the spontaneous emission of a photon, due to conservation of momentum, the atom gains momentum equivalent to the momentum of the photon. This kinetic energy gain corresponds to the recoil temperature of the atom. The recoil temperature is
An optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is a parametric oscillator that oscillates at optical frequencies. It converts an input laser wave with frequency into two output waves of lower frequency by means of second-order nonlinear optical interaction. The sum of the output waves' frequencies is equal to the input wave frequency: . For historical reasons, the two output waves are called "signal" and "idler", where the output wave with higher frequency is the "signal". A special case is the degenerate OPO, when the output frequency is one-half the pump frequency, , which can result in half-harmonic generation when signal and idler have the same polarization.
Optical molasses is a laser cooling technique that can cool neutral atoms to as low as a few microkelvin, depending on the atomic species. An optical molasses consists of 3 pairs of counter-propagating orthogonally polarized laser beams intersecting in the region where the atoms are present. The main difference between an optical molasses (OM) and a magneto-optical trap (MOT) is the absence of magnetic field in the former. Unlike a MOT, an OM provides only cooling and no trapping.
An optical lattice is formed by the interference of counter-propagating laser beams, creating a spatially periodic polarization pattern. The resulting periodic potential may trap neutral atoms via the Stark shift. Atoms are cooled and congregate at the potential extrema. The resulting arrangement of trapped atoms resembles a crystal lattice and can be used for quantum simulation.
Doppler cooling is a mechanism that can be used to trap and slow the motion of atoms to cool a substance. The term is sometimes used synonymously with laser cooling, though laser cooling includes other techniques.
In atomic, molecular, and optical physics, a magneto-optical trap (MOT) is an apparatus which uses laser cooling and a spatially-varying magnetic field to create a trap which can produce samples of cold, neutral atoms. Temperatures achieved in a MOT can be as low as several microkelvin, depending on the atomic species, which is two or three times below the photon recoil limit. However, for atoms with an unresolved hyperfine structure, such as 7Li, the temperature achieved in a MOT will be higher than the Doppler cooling limit.
In condensed matter physics, an ultracold atom is an atom with a temperature near absolute zero. At such temperatures, an atom's quantum-mechanical properties become important.
A nuclear clock or nuclear optical clock is a atomic clock being developed that will use the energy of a nuclear isomeric transition as its reference frequency, instead of the atomic electron transition energy used by conventional atomic clocks. Such a clock is expected to be more accurate than the best current atomic clocks by a factor of about 10, with an achievable accuracy approaching the 10−19 level.
In atomic physics, Raman cooling is a sub-recoil cooling technique that allows the cooling of atoms using optical methods below the limitations of Doppler cooling, Doppler cooling being limited by the recoil energy of a photon given to an atom. This scheme can be performed in simple optical molasses or in molasses where an optical lattice has been superimposed, which are called respectively free space Raman cooling and Raman sideband cooling. Both techniques make use of Raman scattering of laser light by the atoms.
A single-photon source is a light source that emits light as single particles or photons. Single-photon sources are distinct from coherent light sources (lasers) and thermal light sources such as incandescent light bulbs. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates that a state with an exact number of photons of a single frequency cannot be created. However, Fock states can be studied for a system where the electric field amplitude is distributed over a narrow bandwidth. In this context, a single-photon source gives rise to an effectively one-photon number state.
Double ionization is a process of formation of doubly charged ions when laser radiation is exerted on neutral atoms or molecules. Double ionization is usually less probable than single-electron ionization. Two types of double ionization are distinguished: sequential and non-sequential.
Sub-Doppler cooling is a class of laser cooling techniques that reduce the temperature of atoms and molecules below the Doppler cooling limit. In experiment implementation, Doppler cooling is limited by the broad natural linewidth of the lasers used in cooling. Regardless of the transition used, however, Doppler cooling processes have an intrinsic cooling limit that is characterized by the momentum recoil from the emission of a photon from the particle. This is called the recoil temperature and is usually far below the linewidth-based limit mentioned above.
Peter E. Toschek was a German experimental physicist who researched nuclear physics, quantum optics, and laser physics. He is known as a pioneer of laser spectroscopy and for the first demonstration of single trapped atoms (ions). He was a professor at Hamburg University.
Gray molasses is a method of sub-Doppler laser cooling of atoms. It employs principles from Sisyphus cooling in conjunction with a so-called "dark" state whose transition to the excited state is not addressed by the resonant lasers. Ultracold atomic physics experiments on atomic species with poorly-resolved hyperfine structure, like isotopes of lithium and potassium, often utilize gray molasses instead of Sisyphus cooling as a secondary cooling stage after the ubiquitous magneto-optical trap (MOT) to achieve temperatures below the Doppler limit. Unlike a MOT, which combines a molasses force with a confining force, a gray molasses can only slow but not trap atoms; hence, its efficacy as a cooling mechanism lasts only milliseconds before further cooling and trapping stages must be employed.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)