Abstract
We study laser cooling of atomic gases by collisional redistribution, a technique applicable to ultradense atomic ensembles at a pressure of a few hundred bars. Frequent collisions of an optically active atom with a buffer gas shift atoms into resonance with a far red detuned laser beam, while spontaneous decay occurs close to the unperturbed resonance frequency. In such an excitation cycle, a kinetic energy of the order of the thermal energy k B T is extracted from the sample. Here we report of recent experiments investigating the cooling of a potassium–argon gas mixture, which compared to a rubidium–argon mixture investigated in earlier experiments has a smaller fine structure of the optically active alkali atoms. We observe a relative cooling of the potassium–argon gas mixture by 120 K.
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Saß, A., Vogl, U. & Weitz, M. Laser cooling of a potassium–argon gas mixture using collisional redistribution of radiation. Appl. Phys. B 102, 503–507 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-011-4401-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-011-4401-y