A High Flux Cold Atomic Beam for Experiments in Strongly Coupled Cavity QED
POSTER
Abstract
We present a high flux continuous source of cold atoms for cavity QED experiments in the regime of strong coupling.~ A 2D+ MOT, loaded by rubidium dispensers in a dry film coated vapor cell, loads a secondary moving-molasses MOT (MM-MOT) at a rate of 1.5*10$^{10}$ atoms/s.~ The MM-MOT provides a velocity tunable (3 to 10 m/s) high flux continuous beam.~ We direct the beam through the 64 $\mu $m waist of a high finesse optical cavity with 246 $\mu $m mirror spacing. The atom-cavity coupling rate g, cavity dissipation rate $\kappa $, and atomic decay rate $\gamma $ are (g, $\kappa $, $\gamma )$/2$\pi $ = (8, 2, 3) MHz, placing the system in the strong regime.~We are currently characterizing the source using the cavity QED system and will report its performance as a function of MOT parameters.
*Supported by the NSF