Positronium Laser Deceleration, Cooling and Trapping

Abstract

We numerically study laser deceleration, cooling and trapping of host fast ortho-positronium (Ps) bunches as produced in silica microchannel targets using positron bunches from a Surko trap. While Doppler laser cooling routinely allows to cool neutral atom species below milli-Kelvin kinetic temperatures, the fast ground state annihilation and the high recoil shift to line-width ratio in Ps pose new challenging limitations on timing and the required laser power. Earlier theoretical work and first experiments already exhibit viable prospects for radiation pressure cooling to create unprecedented cold and dense Ps ensembles. Our extended numerical studies confirm very good prospects to simultaneously decelerate, cool and optically trap Ps atoms in a standard Doppler cooling geometry on the 1³S--2³P transition. Including the full Zeeman state manifolds and adding additional transverse lasers on the 2³P--3³D transition improves timing and final temperature to allow for optical trapping at the end. The required laser powers and geometry parameters to implement effective slowing and trapping within a time frame, where the majority of atoms is not annihilated, is in reach of current technology of mJ energy pulses of approximately 100 ns duration. Future extensions to collectively enhance cooling and trapping in optical cavities or hollow-core fibres should finally allow fast preparation of ultra-cold Ps systems as future basis of superradiant lasing and Bose--Einstein condensates.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{mendei2026positronium,
  title = {{Positronium Laser Deceleration, Cooling and Trapping}},
  author = {Barna Mendei and Helmut Ritsch},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.35202},
  eprint = {2609.35202},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35202},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Positronium Laser Deceleration, Cooling and Trapping
AU  - Barna Mendei
AU  - Helmut Ritsch
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/28
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.35202
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35202
AB  - We numerically study laser deceleration, cooling and trapping of host fast ortho-positronium (Ps) bunches as produced in silica microchannel targets using positron bunches from a Surko trap. While Doppler laser cooling routinely allows to cool neutral atom species below milli-Kelvin kinetic temperatures, the fast ground state annihilation and the high recoil shift to line-width ratio in Ps pose new challenging limitations on timing and the required laser power. Earlier theoretical work and first experiments already exhibit viable prospects for radiation pressure cooling to create unprecedented cold and dense Ps ensembles. Our extended numerical studies confirm very good prospects to simultaneously decelerate, cool and optically trap Ps atoms in a standard Doppler cooling geometry on the 1^3S--2^3P transition. Including the full Zeeman state manifolds and adding additional transverse lasers on the 2^3P--3^3D transition improves timing and final temperature to allow for optical trapping at the end. The required laser powers and geometry parameters to implement effective slowing and trapping within a time frame, where the majority of atoms is not annihilated, is in reach of current technology of mJ energy pulses of approximately 100 ns duration. Future extensions to collectively enhance cooling and trapping in optical cavities or hollow-core fibres should finally allow fast preparation of ultra-cold Ps systems as future basis of superradiant lasing and Bose--Einstein condensates.
ER  -

Abstract

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