2008/05/31 by C. Tuchendler, A. M. Lance, A. Browaeys +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.78.033425
published as Phys. Rev. A 78, 033425 (2008) · 9 pages, 6 figures, published in PRA
arxiv created 2008/09/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We investigate experimentally the energy distribution of a single rubidium atom trapped in a strongly focused dipole trap under various cooling regimes. Using two different methods to measure the mean energy of the atom, we show that the energy distribution of the radiatively cooled atom is close to thermal. We then demonstrate how to reduce the energy of the single atom, first by adiabatic cooling, and then by truncating the Boltzmann distribution of the single atom. This provides a non-deterministic way to prepare atoms at low microKelvin temperatures, close to the ground state of the trapping potential.