Sub-Doppler laser cooling of fermionic 40K atoms in three-dimensional gray optical molasses

Diogo Rio Fernandes (1) , Franz Sievers (1) , Norman Kretzschmar (1) , Saijun Wu (2) , C. Salomon (1) , Frédéric Chevy (1)

1 LKB (Lhomond) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel
2 Department of Physics [Swansea]

We demonstrate sub-Doppler cooling of 40K on the D_1 atomic transition. Using a gray molasses scheme, we efficiently cool a compressed cloud of 6.5x10^8 atoms from ~ 4\mK to 20uK in 8 ms. After transfer in a quadrupole magnetic trap, we measure a phase space density of ~10^-5. This technique offers a promising route for fast evaporation of fermionic 40K.

Mots clés: cold atoms: laser cooling

Domaines: Gaz Quantiques [cond-mat.quant-gas]; Physique Atomique [physics.atom-ph]

Diogo Rio Fernandes, Franz Sievers, Norman Kretzschmar, Saijun Wu, C. Salomon, et al.. Sub-Doppler laser cooling of fermionic 40K atoms in three-dimensional gray optical molasses. 2012. ⟨hal-00738260⟩