Atomic Dipole Traps with Amplified Spontaneous Emission: A Proposal

Jean-François Clément (1, 2) , Véronique Zehnlé (1, 2) , Jean Claude Garreau (1, 2) , Pascal Szriftgiser (1, 2)

1 PhLAM - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Atomes et Molécules - UMR 8523
2 CERLA - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Lasers et Applications

We propose what we believe to be a novel type of optical source for ultra-cold atomic Far Off-Resonance optical-dipole Traps (FORTs). The source is based on an Erbium Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) source that seeds a high power Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA). The main interest of this source is its very low coherence length, thus allowing an incoherent superposition of several trapping beams without any optical interference. The behavior of the superimposed beams is then a scalar sum greatly simplifying complex configurations. As an illustration, we report an estimation of the intensity noise of this source and an estimation of the atomic excess heating rate for an evaporative cooling experiment application. They are both found to be suitable for cold atoms experiments.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]; Optique [physics.optics]

Jean-François Clément, Véronique Zehnlé, Jean Claude Garreau, Pascal Szriftgiser. Atomic Dipole Traps with Amplified Spontaneous Emission: A Proposal. Optics Communications, 2010, 283 (21), pp.4293-4297. ⟨10.1016/j.optcom.2010.06.048⟩. ⟨hal-00508554⟩