一种精确测量原子喷泉冷原子团温度的方法

A method of accurately determining temperature of cold atomic cloud in atomic fountain

冷原子团的高斯半径和温度是用来描述冷原子团,反映冷原子特性的主要参数.本文提出了一种新型的测量冷原子团高斯半径和温度的方法,采用过饱和近共振激光束照射冷原子团,原子由于吸收了光子动量偏离原来的运动轨道,而不能被探测系统所探测.根据冷原子团的原子分布规律,理论上构建了物理模型,通过改变作用于冷原子团的推除光的尺寸来控制被推除的冷原子数目,计算得到了不同高斯半径的冷原子团剩余原子数目与推除光尺寸的关系.以国家授时中心铯原子喷泉为实验平台,利用横向偏置的刀口光阑在不同下落高度控制作用于冷原子团的推除光尺寸,测量出不同高度的剩余原子数目随推除光尺寸的变化情况.应用理论公式拟合实验数据,最终得到冷原子团在磁光阱中心正下方10 mm和160 mm处的高斯半径分别为的准确性和可重复性,在同一实验条件下用刀口法和飞行时间法对冷原子团温度进行了测量与对比,最终得到两种方法的测量结果基本一致.

The Gaussian radius and temperature of cold atomic cloud are important parameters in describing the state of cold atoms. The precise measuring of these two parameters is of great significance for studying the cold atoms. In this paper, we propose a new method named knife-edge to measure the Gaussian radius and temperature of the cold atomic cloud. A near-resonant and supersaturated laser beam, whose size is controlled by a knife-edge aperture, is used to push away the cold atoms in the free falling process of cold atomic cloud. By detecting the intensity of fluorescence signal, the numbers of residual atoms under different-sized near-resonant beams can be obtained. According to the characteristic of cold atoms′ distribution, we construct a theoretical model to derive the Gaussian radius of cold atomic cloud from the recorded residual atom number and near-resonant beam size. Since the Gaussian radius and temperature of cold atomic cloud are associated with each other, we can finally obtain the temperature of cold atomic cloud through the recorded residual atom number and beam size. By using this method, we successfully measure the Gaussian radii of cold atomic cloud at the heights of 10 mm and 160 mm below the center of 3D-MOT (three dimensional magneto-optical trap) to be (1.54 ± 0.05) mm and (3.29 ± 0.08) mm, respectively. The corresponding temperature of cold atomic cloud is calculated to be (7.50 ± 0.49)μK, which is well consistent with the experimental result obtained by using the time-of-flight method under the same condition. This experiment is conducted on the platform of Cesium atomic fountain clock of National Time Service Center, China.