Application
As a result of low densities and speeds of atoms achieved by optical cooling, the mean free path in a ball of MOT cooled atoms is very long, and atoms may be treated as ballistic. This is useful for quantum information experiments where it is necessary to have long coherence times ( the time an atom spends in a defined quantum state). Because of the continuous cycle of absorption and spontaneous emission, which causes decoherence, any quantum manipulation experiments must be performed with the MOT beams turned off. In this case, it is common to stop the expansion of the gasses during quantum information experiments by loading the cooled atoms into a dipole trap.
A magneto-optical trap is usually the first step to achieving Bose-Einstein condensation. Atoms are cooled in a MOT down to a few times the recoil limit, and then evaporatively cooled which lowers the temperature and increases the density to the required phase space density.
A MOT of 133Cs was used to make some of the best measurements of CP violation.
Read more about this topic: Magneto-optical Trap
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