New approaches in deep laser cooling of magnesium atoms for quantum metrology

Abstract

Two approaches for solving the long-standing problem of deep laser cooling of neutral magnesium atoms are proposed. The first one uses optical molasses with orthogonal linear polarizations of light waves. The second approach involves a ‘nonstandard’ magneto-optical trap (NMOT) composed of light waves with elliptical polarizations (in general). Both the widely used semiclassical approach based on the Fokker–Planck equation and quantum treatment fully taking into account the recoil effect are employed for theoretical analysis. The results show the possibility of obtaining temperatures lower than 100 µK simultaneously with a large number of cold atoms ~106 ÷ 107. A new velocity-selective cooling technique allowing one to reach the microkelvin temperature range is also proposed. This technique may have some advantages over, for instance, the shallow-dipole-trap technique utilized by other authors. In the case of magnesium atoms this new technique may be used for obtaining a large number of ultracold atoms (T ~ 1 µK, N > 105). Such a large number of ultracold atoms is crucial issue for metrological and many other applications of cold atoms.