Eur. Phys. J. D (2014) 68: 14
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40431-8

Regular Article

Collision assisted Zeeman cooling with multiple types of atoms

Department of Physics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 80523 Colorado, USA

^a e-mail: mathamtn@rams.colostate.edu

Received: 19 July 2013
Received in final form: 9 December 2013
Published online: 23 January 2014

Abstract

Through a combination of spin-exchange collisions in a magnetic field and optical pumping, it is possible to cool a gas of atoms without requiring the loss of atoms from the gas. This technique, collision assisted Zeeman cooling (CAZ), was developed theoretically assuming a single atomic species [G. Ferrari, Eur. Phys. J. D 13, 67 (2001)]. We have extended this cooling technique to a system of two atomic species rather than just one and have developed a simple analytic model describing the cooling rate. We find that the two-isotope CAZ cooling scheme has a clear theoretical advantage in systems that are reabsorption limited.