Sub-Recoil Transverse Momentum Width in a Cold Ytterbium Atomic Beam

Abstract

We demonstrate the generation of a slow ytterbium atomic beam with a transverse momentum width of $0.44(6)$ times the photon recoil associated with Bragg diffraction, and a flux of $6.7(9) \times 10^6$ atoms/s. This is achieved by applying momentum filtering through a long-lived metastable state to atoms prepared in a slow beam via two-dimensional transverse laser cooling. The resulting narrow momentum distribution enables efficient quasi-Bragg diffraction, which we exploit to realize a Bragg interferometer. These results mark a significant step toward continuous, high-precision, and magnetically insensitive angular rate measurements using cold alkaline-earth(-like) atomic beams.