Abstract

The idea of Zacharias¹ to use an atomic fountain for spectroscopy has attracted attention for many years. We note that in a laser-cooled sodium atomic beam prepared by using an optical frequency-sweeping technique, the atoms with upward transverse velocity can be used as an atomic fountain. The cooling scheme is basically the same as we used before.² At the end of each frequency sweep for cooling, the atoms are optically pumped into the Zeeman level (F = 1, m_F = 0) in the ground state.

© 1987 Optical Society of America