Laser cooling of iron atoms

The work presented in this thesis is dedicated to the development and implementation of a cold atom experiment which handles an atomic species that has not been cooled down so far: iron. The experiment requires the use of two UV laser radiations (at 372 and 358 nm) that are frequency stabilized by means of saturation spectroscopy, an iron atomic beam, and a vacuum system, which we contributed to implement and characterize.

In addition to this development, several spectroscopic studies were carried out in this thesis. By means of saturation spectroscopy, the hyperfine structure of the molecular-iodine R(90)3-10 transition at 716 nm was first studied following its involvement in the frequency stabilization of the 358-nm radiation. A spectroscopic study of the 358-nm Fe I cooling transition, which was totally unknown prior to this thesis, was also conducted using laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy. With the same technique, a high accuracy measurement of the iron 358-nm transition frequency with respect to the molecular-iodine R(90)3-10 transition was performed. For this measurement, we implemented a particular configuration which allowed for the minimising of an important systematic error.

The first laser cooling of iron is also reported. For this purpose, the Zeeman slowing technique was implemented following a particular two-laser scheme. To our knowledge, this Zeeman slower is the first of this kind. Furthermore, the complete characterization of the cold iron atomic beam produced at the output of the Zeeman slower was done, which allowed for an optimized loading of the magneto-optical trap. Finally, the creation of a cold cloud of iron atoms demonstrated the Zeeman slower ability to properly load an iron magneto-optical trap.