Hyperfine and Zeeman Optical Pumping and Transverse Laser Cooling of a Thermal Atomic Beam of Dysprosium Using a Single 421 nm Laser

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates hyperfine and Zeeman optical pumping and transverse laser cooling of a dysprosium atomic beam at 421 nm, enabling polarized and cooled beams for fundamental physics experiments such as parity violation measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a method using a single laser and electro-optic modulation to achieve hyperfine and Zeeman optical pumping and cooling of dysprosium atoms.

Findings

Successful optical pumping to specific hyperfine and Zeeman states

Effective transverse laser cooling of the dysprosium atomic beam

Preparation of polarized, cooled atomic beams for physics experiments

Abstract

We demonstrate the effect of Zeeman and hyperfine optical pumping and transverse laser cooling of a dysprosium (Dy) atomic beam on the $4f^{10}6s^2(J = 8) \rightarrow 4f^{10}6s6p(J = 9)$ transition at 421.291 nm. For $^{163}$Dy, an electro-optic modulator is used to generate five frequency sidebands required to pump the atoms to the $F = 10.5$ ground state hyperfine level and the light polarization is chosen to pump the atoms to the $m_F = 10.5$ Zeeman sublevel. The atoms are simultaneously laser-cooled using a standing wave orthogonal to the atomic beam. The resulting polarized and cooled atomic beam will be used in fundamental physics experiments taking advantage of the accidental degeneracy of excited states in Dy including the ongoing measurement of parity violation in this system.