Abstract

High densities of low velocity atoms or molecules may be produced from moving liquid drops. This technique can be useful for filling to high density neutral atom traps that have small well depths. If a drop travels at or near the mean thermal velocity of the atoms that are evaporating from the surface of the drop, the atoms that evaporate in the direction opposite the velocity of the drop have a velocity in the laboratory reference frame greatly reduced by the motion of the drop. These slow atoms may be further cooled in the trap by laser radiation. If the drop is rapidly heated by a laser pulse, the velocity distribution is compressed and the density of the low velocity atoms can be increased. Also the velocity distributions of the atoms evaporating from small drops may be interrogated by their Doppler-shifted resonance lines. This may give new information about liquids with small dimensions.

© 1989 Optical Society of America