Semiclassical investigation of magneto-optical trapping with few light beams

Abstract

Magneto optical traps are among the main tools in Atomic and Molecular Physics, taking advantage of radiation pressure force to trap and cool atoms of several species. In special, magneto optical traps can be modelled semiclassiclally, allowing to describe the atomic movement as a damped harmonic oscillator. Recently, it has been demonstrated that magneto optical traps operating in narrow transitions work without the atomic beam collinear with gravity, being called 5-beam traps in contrast with the conventional 6-beam traps. In the same context, our group has demonstrated through full numerical simulations that traps with 3 and 4 beams are also feasible. In this work, we intend to tackle this problem semiclassically, writing the trapping equations of the few-beam magneto optical traps and defining its spring and damping constants, comparing then to the 6-beam traps constants.