Optical deceleration of atomic hydrogen

Abstract

We demonstrate control over the motional degrees of freedom of a cryogenic hydrogen atomic beam using an accelerating optical lattice. For our method, we load metastable atoms from a cryogenic beam into a moving optical lattice, decelerate the lattice, and observe a commensurate deceleration of the atoms. For this demonstration, hydrogen atoms are decelerated by about 20 m s−1 in a 40 ns slowing cycle, with a peak acceleration of ≈4 m s−2. Since the optical lattice is governed by standard optoelectronics, this technique represents a robust platform for the motional control of hydrogen.