Abstract

To compensate the Doppler shift in the laser cooling process, two methods were developed:frequency chirping,¹ which tunes the laser frequency rapidly, and a spatially varying magnetic field,² which tunes The atomic energy level. An alternative approach is to use laser light with a continuous spectrum (white light).^3,4 Using only a counterpropagating white-light beam will decelerate the atoms in the beam, hut it will not yield a large velocity compression.^4,5 To achieve significant cooling, Hoffnagle⁵ proposed the use of an additional single-frequency laser beam, copropagating with the atomic beam, to counterbalance the nonresonant scattering force from the Lorentzian tail of the atomic transition.

© 1991 Optical Society of America