Narrow-line cooling of $^{87}$Rb using 5S$_{1/2} \rightarrow$ 6P$_{3/2}$ open transition at 420 nm

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates loading of $^{87}$Rb atoms into a magneto-optical trap using a narrow 420 nm transition, achieving lower temperatures and higher atom numbers compared to traditional methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of using a narrow open transition at 420 nm for trapping $^{87}$Rb atoms, improving trap performance over standard broad transitions.

Findings

Trapped around 10^8 atoms in the MOT.

Achieved a temperature of approximately 54 microkelvin.

Studied the effects of various parameters on the MOT behavior.

Abstract

Magneto-optical trap (MOT) at narrow (weak) transition offers lower temperature and hence is the key for production of high phase density atomic cloud and subsequently quantum degeneracy with high number of atoms for many elements. In this paper, we describe loading of $^{87}$Rb atoms in the MOT using a narrow open transition at 420 nm from the routinely implemented MOT using broad cyclic transition at 780 nm (IR). The total linewidth of the blue transition, 5S$_{1/2} \rightarrow $ 6P$_{3/2}$ is 1.4 MHz, which is around 4 times narrower than the standard 5S$_{1/2} \rightarrow$ 5P$_{3/2}$ cyclic transition. Using this narrow transition, we have trapped around $10^{8}$ atoms in the MOT with a typical temperature of around $54~\mu$K. We have also studied the behavior of the blue MOT with various parameters such as hold time, detuning and power of trapping and repumper beams.