Abstract

Optical molasses acts like a viscous medium and does not form a trap. In it, the velocity of a particle changes rapidly and at random (momentum diffusion intrinsic to the cooling process), as in Brownian motion, and the atom diffuses spatially. To date, most studies of optical molasses have determined its temperature. We present here direct measurements of spatial diffusion in three-dimensional optical molasses (lin-perp-lin configuration) and compare them with our theoretical predictions.

© 1993 Optical Society of America