Diode-laser deceleration and collimation of a rubidium beam

Abstract

We report the use of frequency-chirped diode lasers to decelerate a thermal atomic beam of Rb and, in a separate experiment, the use of frequency-stabilized diode lasers to collimate the beam with optical molasses. For this we used a 100-mW cw laser-diode array injection locked to light from a low-power, frequency-narrowed, single-stripe diode laser. Also, a novel scheme for imaging the neutral-atom beam profile has been developed for monitoring the collimation experiments in two dimensions. We have increased both beam brightness and intensity by a factor of more than 20.