Abstract

We discuss the prospects for a class of laser-like sources of atoms where the accumulation of atoms in one of the DeBroglie modes of a small matter wave resonator (Lamb-Dicke regime) is achieved by optical pumping of an atomic gas — see Fig. 1 [1,2]. Pre-cooled atoms in an internal state a which is not affected by the trapping potential are excited into a state e by means of laser light. Once the atom is in state e it decays into the electronic ground state g by means of spontaneous emission, thereby occupying one of the trap states v = 0,1,⋯. Due to the bosonic nature of the atoms, the probability for a transition into a given trap state (“mode”) v is proportional to 1+ N_v (“gain”), where N_v is the number of atoms in mode v prior to the transition. In analogy to the laser atoms may leave the resonator with mode-specific loss rates k_v which is due to tunneling and possibly photon scattering (of trap photons, for example).

© 1996 IEEE