Laser Cooling

JUN 01, 1987

The mechanical forces exerted by light can dramatically lower the temperature of a sample of atoms or ions, allowing very‐high‐resolution spectroscopic measurements and ultralow‐temperature atomic physics experiments.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881076

David J. Wineland

Wayne M. Itano

In the photograph on the opposite page we see a single mercury ion held nearly at rest in an electromagnetic “trap.” Physicists have seen individual atoms before, in arrays imaged by field ion microscopes and more recently by vacuum tunneling microscopes, but what we see here is different. It graphically demonstrates a physicist’s ideal: holding a single isolated atom nearly at rest for careful examination.

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More about the authors

David J. Wineland, National Bureau of Standards, Boulder, Colorado.

Wayne M. Itano, National Bureau of Standards, Boulder, Colorado.