Abstract

Techniques to generate cold atom beams are of great interest in a variety of applications, from atomic frequency standards and atom optics to experimental studies of Bose-Einstein condensation. Cold atom beams have been produced by slowing thermal atomic beams using the Zeeman-slowing technique¹ or chirped lasers,² or using laser-cooling techniques to extract a slow atomic beam from the background gas in a low-pressure vapor cell. These laser-cooling techniques include “atomic funnels” or twodimensional magneto-optical traps,^3-5 as well as a variation of the conventional vapor cell magneto-optical trap called the “low-velocity intense source” (LVIS).

© 1999 Optical Society of America