We demonstrate and interpret a technique of laser-induced formation of thin metallic films using alkali atoms on the window of a dense-vapour cell. We show that this intriguing photo-stimulated process originates from the adsorption of Cs atoms via the neutralisation of Cs$^+$ ions by substrate electrons. The Cs$^+$ ions are produced via two-photon absorption by excited Cs atoms very close to the surface, which enables the transfer of the laser spatial intensity profile to the film thickness. An initial decrease of the surface work function is required to guarantee Cs$^+$ neutralisation and results in a threshold in the vapour density. This understanding of the film growth mechanism may facilitate the development of new techniques of laser-controlled lithography, starting from thermal vapours.
We develop the theory of propagation of laser wave in a gas of two-level atoms (with an optical transition frequency $omega^{}_0$) under the condition of inhomogeneous Doppler broadening, considering the self-consistent solution of the Maxwell-Bloch equations in the mean-field approximation and for one-atomic density matrix. The nonlinear effects in the atomic density $n$, caused by the free motion of atoms, are found. These effects distort the lineshape (shift, asymmetry, broadening), but are not associated with atom-atom interaction. Moreover, in the case $nk^{-3}_0<1$ (where $k^{}_0=omega^{}_0/c$) and temperatures $Tgtrsim 300$~K, these quasi-collective effects exceed the well-known influence of the dipole-dipole interatomic interaction (e.g., Lorentz-Lorenz shift) by more than one order of magnitude. It was also found that for some area of parameters, the frequency interval appears, within which the non-trivial self-consistent solution of the Maxwell-Bloch equations is absent at all. Thus, the physical picture of collective effects in a gas medium should be substantially revised.
We present measurements of the velocity distribution of calcium atoms in an atomic beam generated using a dual-stage laser back-ablation apparatus. Distributions are measured using a velocity selective Doppler time-of-flight technique. They are Boltzmann-like with rms velocities corresponding to temperatures above the melting point for calcium. Contrary to a recent report in the literature, this method does not generate a sub-thermal atomic beam.
We describe measurements demonstrating laser cooling of an atomic gas by means of collisional redistribution of radiation. The experiment uses rubidium atoms in the presence of several hundred bar of argon buffer gas pressure. Frequent collisions in the dense gas transiently shift a far red detuned optical field into resonance, while spontaneous emission occurs close to the unperturbed atomic transition frequency. Evidence for the cooling is obtained both via thermographic imaging and via thermographic deflection spectroscopy. The cooled gas has a density above 10$^{21}$ atoms/cm$^3$, yielding evidence for the laser cooling of a macroscopic ensemble of gas atoms.
When graphene is close to charge neutrality, its energy landscape is highly inhomogeneous, forming a sea of electron-like and hole-like puddles, which determine the properties of graphene at low carrier density. However, the details of the puddle formation have remained elusive. We demonstrate numerically that in sharp contrast to monolayer graphene, the normalized autocorrelation function for the puddle landscape in bilayer graphene depends only on the distance between the graphene and the source of the long-ranged impurity potential. By comparing with available experimental data, we find quantitative evidence for the implied differences in scanning tunneling microscopy measurements of electron and hole puddles for monolayer and bilayer graphene in nominally the same disorder potential.
We propose a laser cooling technique in which atoms are selectively excited to a dressed metastable state whose light shift and decay rate are spatially correlated for Sisyphus cooling. The case of cooling magnetically trapped (anti)hydrogen with the 1S-2S-3P transitions using pulsed ultra violet and continuous-wave visible lasers is numerically simulated. We find a number of appealing features including rapid 3-dimensional cooling from ~1 K to recoil-limited, millikelvin temperatures, as well as suppressed spin-flip loss and manageable photoionization loss.