Investigation of two-color magneto-optical trap with cesium 6S1/2-6P3/2-7S1/2 ladder-type system

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel two-color magneto-optical trap for cesium atoms using a ladder-type system, demonstrating its ability to cool and trap atoms effectively with potential applications in quantum communication.

Contribution

It proposes and experimentally investigates a new two-color Cs MOT utilizing a ladder-type system with 1470 nm and 852 nm beams, expanding trapping capabilities.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated cooling and trapping on both sides of two-photon resonance.

Potential for background-free atom detection and quantum communication applications.

Abstract

A novel cesium (Cs) two-color magneto-optical trap (TC-MOT), which partially employs the optical radiation forces due to photon scattering of the 6P3/2 (F'=5) - 7S1/2 (F"=4) excited-state transition in the Cs 6S1/2 - 6P3/2 - 7S1/2 (852 + 1470 nm) ladder-type system, has been proposed and experimentally investigated. One of the three pairs of 852 nm cooling/trapping beams (CTBs) in a conventional Cs MOT is replaced with a pair of the 1470 nm CTBs (type-I) or with one 852 nm CTB plus another counter-propagating 1470 nm CTB (type-II). Both the type-I and type-II Cs TC-MOTs can cool and trap atoms on both the red- and blue-detuning sides of the two-photon resonance. The Cs TC-MOT demonstrated in this work may have applications in the background-free detection of cooled and trapped atoms, and the photon-pair sources compatible with the ensemble-based quantum memory and the long-distance quantum communication via optical fiber.