ULTRACOLD ATOMIC STRONTIUM: FROM UNCONVENTIONAL LASER COOLING AND FUTURE OPTICAL STANDARDS TO PHOTON-FREE ANISOTROPIC MANY BODY PHYSICS

摘要

We report the first experimental study of sub-Doppler cooling in alkaline earth atoms (~(87)Sr) enabled by the presence of nuclear spin-originated magnetic degeneracy in the atomic ground state. A detailed investigation of system thermodynamics with respect to trapping beam parameters clearly reveals sub-Doppler temperatures despite the presence of multiple, closely spaced excited-states. This novel result is confirmed by a multi-level theory of the radiative cooling force. In addition, we describe an experimental study of magnetically trapped ~3P_2 state metastable ~(88)Sr, a system that may ultimately provide unique insights into the physics of many-body systems with anisotropic interactions.