Magneto-optical trap of neutral mercury for an optical lattice clock

Author

Petersen, M. ; Millo, J. ; Magalhães, D.V. ; Mandache, C. ; Dawkins, S.T. ; Chicireanu, R. ; Lecoq, Y. ; Acef, O. ; Santarelli, G. ; Clairon, A. ; Bize, S.

Author_Institution

UMR CNRS 8630, Paris

fYear

2008

fDate

19-21 May 2008

Firstpage

451

Lastpage

454

Abstract

We report the cooling and trapping of neutral mercury in a vacuum chamber using the ¹S₀ - ³P₁ intercombination transition. We produce an atom cloud of a few million atoms with a trap loading time of 1.6 seconds. The atoms are prepared for the interrogation of the forbidden ¹S₀ - ³P₀ intercombination transition, using an ultra-stable UV source referenced to a vertically mounted Fabry-Perot cavity.

Keywords

Fabry-Perot resonators; atomic clocks; laser cooling; magneto-optical effects; mercury (metal); optical lattices; radiation pressure; ultraviolet sources; Hg; atom cloud production; forbidden intercombination transition; magneto-optical trap; neutral mercury cooling; optical lattice clock; trap loading time; ultra-stable UV source; vacuum chamber; vertically mounted Fabry-Perot cavity; Atomic beams; Atomic clocks; Atomic measurements; Charge carrier processes; Cooling; Frequency; Lattices; Mirrors; Plasmas; Strontium;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frequency Control Symposium, 2008 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Honolulu, HI

ISSN

1075-6787

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1794-0

Electronic_ISBN

1075-6787

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FREQ.2008.4623038

Filename

4623038