Laser Cooling

ME547 Course Presentation Team members:

Kuntla Thanmai Reddy: 1801ME30
Course Instructor: Dr. Subrata Kumar Anway Bhattacharyya: 1801ME14
 LASER COOLING – THE BASICS
 Laser cooling and laser trapping include a number of techniques in which atomic and molecular samples are cooled
down to near absolute zero. Laser cooling techniques rely on the fact that when an object (usually an atom) absorbs
and re-emits a photon (a particle of light) its momentum changes.
 For an ensemble of particles, their thermodynamic temperature is proportional to the variance in their velocity. That
is, more homogeneous velocities among particles corresponds to a lower temperature.
 Laser cooling techniques combine atomic spectroscopy with the aforementioned mechanical effect of light to
compress the velocity distribution of an ensemble of particles, thereby cooling the particles.

Fig 1. Courtesy: www.eos.com Fig 2: Courtesy: www.electrooptics.com

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT WORKS
1975 • Hansch et. al. and Wineland et. al. – Possibility of laser cooling
1978 • Neuhauser et. al. – First demonstration of laser cooling for trapped ions
1982 • Phillips and Metcalf - First stopping of thermal beam
1985 • Chu et. al. – First cooling of sodium atoms using this technology
1987 • Dailbard et. al. – Theory of magneto-optical trap (MOT)
1988 • Cohen et. al. – Sub-Doppler cooling
1995 • Anderson et.al – Laser + evaporative cooling

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1997 was awarded jointly to Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
and William D. Phillips "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light."
DOPPLER COOLING

 The most basic and the first method used for cooling atoms using lasers is called
Doppler Cooling.
 Doppler cooling involves light with frequency tuned slightly below an electronic
transition in an atom.
 A stationary atom sees the laser neither red- nor blue-shifted and does not absorb
the photon.
 An atom moving away from the laser sees it red-shifted and does not absorb the
photon.
 An atom moving towards the laser sees it blue-shifted and absorbs the photon,
slowing the atom.
 DOPPLER COOLING

 The red and blue shifts are due to Doppler Effect, since
the atom is not stationary.
 The photon excites the atom, moving an electron to a
higher quantum state.
 The atom re-emits a photon. As its direction is random,
there is no net change in momentum over many photons.
 Kinetic Energy: 3/2 KT = 1/2mv^2, and this relation
implies that v is proportional to T^(1/2). Therefore,
slowing means cooling
Fig 3: Courtesy: www.wikipedia.en
MAGNETO – OPTICAL TRAP

 A magneto-optical trap (MOT) is an apparatus which uses

laser cooling and a spatially-varying magnetic field to create
a trap which can produce samples of cold, trapped, neutral
atoms.
 Temperatures achieved in a MOT can be as low as several
microkelvins, depending on the atomic species.
 In combination with the magnetic field, pairs of counter-
propagating circularly-polarized laser beams are sent in
along three orthogonal axes, for a total of six MOT beams are
red-detuned.
MAGNETO – OPTICAL TRAP

 As atoms travel away from the field zero at the center of the trap (halfway between
the coils), the spatially-varying Zeeman shift brings an atomic transition into
resonance which gives rise to a scattering force that pushes the atoms back
towards the center of the trap.
 This is why a MOT traps atoms, and because this force arises from photon
scattering in which atoms receive momentum "kicks" in the direction opposite
their motion, it also slows the atoms and cools them.
LIMITATIONS OF LASER COOLING

 Since the atom performs a random walk in the momentum space, and the photon
momentum changes due to the spontaneous emissions and absorption of
photons, there is a heating effect which acts simultaneously, and therefore, there
is a limit to the minimum temperature which can be attained.
 The concentration must be minimal, since there is a tendency of photon
absorption if an excited atom collides with another atom. The excited atom may
come back to ground state, while the energy released may convert to kinetic
energy and the kinetic energy is directly related to temperature, therefore this
heats the atoms. The concentration is kept minimum to keep the chances of
collision as small as possible.
LIMITATIONS OF LASER COOLING

 Atomic structure also limits the applicability of this technology. This is because
laser power is difficult to generate at wavelengths below 300 nm. If an atom has
very hyperfine electron energy levels, there are more ways for it to emit a photon
from the upper excited state and not returning to the ground state, thereby,
removing it from the cooling mechanism.
APPLICATIONS

1 •Construction of Atomic Clocks

•Making instruments for Atom Optics and Atomic Lithography

2

•Atomic Interferometers and Atom Lasers

3

•Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensate in dilute atomic gases

4
REFERENCES

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cooling as accessed on 03/04/2022

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_cooling as accessed on 03/04/2022

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_trap as accessed on 03/04/2022

 Kowalski K et. al., Magneto-optical Trap: Fundamentals and Realization, Computational Methods In Science And
Technology 2010
 Metcalf H.J. et. al. Laser Cooling and Trapping, Springer, 1999
THANK YOU