Abstract

We report in this talk the first demonstration of the laser cooling of a metastatic atomic bean, and the transfer of cooled atoms between two different metastatic states. The laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms have been demonstrated only on alkali atoms. It is of great interest to extend this technique to other atomic species. The standard cooling scheme for those atoms uses the ground state as the lower energy level of the cooling transition. The cooling transtion must have a sizable transition moment and its wavelength must be in the region where a continuous laser is available. Such an excited level can generally be found in alkali, alkali earths. For many transition and rare-earth metals, an adequate excited level can be found only in relatively high excited states.

© 1988 Optical Society of America