Collimation of Atomic Beam Using Ratarted Dipole Force

Abstract

Publisher Summary Collimation of moving atoms by radiation pressure is one of the interesting subjects. A French group collimated a cesium atomic beam by using stimulated optical molasses for the first time. This chapter describes an experimental study done on collimation of atomic beam by retarded dipole force and the beam, which is composed of channeling atoms. In the experiment, the transverse velocity of the collimate atomic beam was measured to be much lower than the Doppler cooling limit. The fluorescence shown in the experiment represents the profile of the atomic beam. The spatial distribution of the fluorescence is imaged on the sensitive surface of the detector of an OMA-II. The acting force on atoms in the standing wave consists of two parts: (1) the so-called dipole force, which is proportional to the gradient of the light field and (2) the retarded dipole force, which is a function of the atomic velocity.