A Maxwell's demon in the generation of an intense and slow guided beam

Gaël Reinaudi (1) , David Guery-Odelin (1, 2)

1 LKB (Lhomond) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel
2 LCAR - Laboratoire Collisions Agrégats Réactivité

We analyze quantitatively the generation of a continuous beam of atoms by the periodic injection of individual packets in a guide, followed by their overlapping. We show that slowing the packets using a moving mirror before their overlapping enables an optimal gain on the phase space density of the generated beam. This is interpreted as a Maxwell's demon type strategy as the experimentalist exploits the information on the position and velocity of the center of mass of each packet.

Mots clés: Maxwell's demon; atomic beam

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

Gaël Reinaudi, David Guery-Odelin. A Maxwell's demon in the generation of an intense and slow guided beam. 2008. ⟨hal-00273918v1⟩