Abstract

Isotropic near-resonant monochromatic light enables the slowing and cooling of atoms. These compensate for the changing Doppler shift as they decelerate by preferentially absorbing photons from a different angle with respect to their direction of motion. This technique offers an efficient way of directly obtaining a continuous beam of slow atoms. All effects scale with the kinetic energy, i.e., for Ne* at 80 K, the length, diameter, and power of an isotropic light field cavity lie within reasonable experimental values.

© 1994 IEEE