Light force cooling, manipulation, and nanometer-scale deposition of neutral aluminum atoms

We have demonstrated that there is a single frequency closed transition in aluminum atoms at 309.4 nm that is suitable for laser cooling and manipulation of the atoms. This transition was used to perform a one-dimensional collimation of an aluminum atomic beam. We then used this highly collimated atomic beam to interact with a near resonant standing light wave which acted as a series of cylindrical atomic lenses and focused the atoms to narrow lines which were deposited onto a silicon substrate. The result was a grating of highly parallel lines of aluminum atoms, with line separation of 154.7 nm, which was half the wavelength of light used to write the grating. This is the first time that aluminum atoms are focused and deposited with light forces.;In order to realize this experiment we developed a continuous wave, tunable UV laser source with suitable power, and an aluminum thermal atomic source with good deposition rates and long run times. For the UV laser source we built an external laser enhancement cavity and placed a nonlinear crystal in the cavity to perform second harmonic generation on the fundamental dye laser light. Through this method along with proper optimization of the cavity parameters we can obtain up to 40 mW of laser light at 309 nm. A dependable thermal atomic source for aluminum was developed through the proper choice of oven material and oven design as well as using an appropriate method of heating the oven to thermal equilibrium. The source has deposition rates up to 0.04 nm/s with total run times between 20 and 30 hours.;The aluminum gratings were stable when removed from the vacuum system, which allowed us to analyze them with an atomic force microscope. This gave us an excellent tool for characterizing the grating features. We obtained lines with a height of 3 nm and FWHM widths averaging 55 nm.;The single frequency closed transition in aluminum was from the second ground state, 3p...