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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 61 » Issue 2
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 169–172 (1988)

Observation of Atoms Laser Cooled below the Doppler Limit

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Paul D. Lett, Richard N. Watts, Christoph I. Westbrook, and William D. Phillips
Electricity Division, National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899

Phillip L. Gould
Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06268

Harold J. Metcalf
Department of Physics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794

Received 18 April 1988; published in the issue dated 11 July 1988

See accompanying Physics Focus

We have measured the temperature of a gas of sodium atoms released from "optical molasses" to be as low as 43±20 μK. Surprisingly, this strongly violates the generally accepted theory of Doppler cooling which predicts a limit of 240 μK. To determine the temperature we used several complementary measurements of the ballistic motion of atoms released from the molasses.

© 1988 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.61.169
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.61.169
PACS:
32.80.Pj, 42.50.Vk
 
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