2020/01/14 by Richard Hobson, William Bowden, Alvise Vianello +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Frequency and Time Standards #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Laser #Lattice (music) #Magnetic field #Magneto optical #Magneto-optical trap #Metastability #Optical lattice #Optics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Spectroscopy #Strontium #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.101.013420
openalex publication_date 2020/01/14 · arxiv created 2020/01/15 · arxiv updated 2020/01/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We report on the realization of a magneto-optical trap (MOT) for metastable strontium operating on the 2.92-\ensuremathμm transition between the energy levels 5s5p\phantom\rule0.16em0ex3P2 and 5s4d\phantom\rule0.16em0ex3D3. The strontium atoms are initially captured in a MOT operating on the 461-nm transition between the energy levels 5s2\phantom\rule0.16em0ex1S0 and 5s5p\phantom\rule0.16em0ex1P1, prior to being transferred into the metastable MOT and cooled to a final temperature of 6 \ensuremathμK. Challenges arising from aligning the midinfrared and 461-nm light are mitigated by employing the same pyramid reflector to realize both MOTs. Finally, the 2.92-\ensuremathμm transition is used to realize a full cooling sequence for an optical lattice clock, in which cold samples of 87Sr are loaded into a magic-wavelength optical lattice and initialized in a spin-polarized state to allow high-precision spectroscopy of the 5s2\phantom\rule0.16em0ex1S0 to 5s5p\phantom\rule0.16em0ex3P0 clock transition.