Crossed-beam slowing to enhance narrow-line ytterbium magneto-optic traps.

We demonstrate a method to enhance the atom loading rate of a ytterbium (Yb) magneto-optic trap (MOT) operating on the 556 nm S → P intercombination transition (narrow linewidth Γ = 2π × 182 kHz). Following traditional Zeeman slowing of an atomic beam near the 399 nm S → P transition (broad linewidth Γ = 2π × 29 MHz), two laser beams in a crossed-beam geometry, frequency tuned near the same transition, provide additional slowing immediately prior to the MOT. Using this technique, we observe an improvement by a factor of 6 in the atom loading rate of a narrow-line Yb MOT.

Three-Path Atom Interferometry with Large Momentum Separation.

We demonstrate the scale up of a symmetric three-path contrast interferometer to large momentum separation. The observed phase stability at separation of 112 photon recoil momenta exceeds the performance of earlier free-space interferometers. In addition to the symmetric interferometer geometry and Bose-Einstein condensate source, the robust scalability of our approach relies on the suppression of undesired diffraction phases through a careful choice of atom optics parameters.