You may be confusing a fountain and an ion trap with LASER cooling. In an ion trap, the ion is in a potential well and interacts with the cooling LASER beam which slows the ion down (in all 3 directions), thus cooling it. The slower moving ion has less Dopplar, hence a better frequency standard.
In a fountain, the ions sort of come out of a gun and they are probed orthogonal to their flow direction. Because the beam is near collimated, the sideways Dopplar is reduced a lot. All very roughly speaking. -John ============== > For the sake of this poor, befuddled non-engineer, would one of you worthy > gentlemen explain how it is that lasers striking a mass of cesium atoms > and > compressing them into a ball (in a cesium fountain) has the effect of > cooling them to near absolute zero? That seems counter-intuitive to me, > but > then I have virtually no education in this area. > > Thanks! > > Bill > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
