Abstract

A simple optical technique consisting in the rotation of Glan-Thompson polarizers is applied to independently vary and control the power of the cooling laser and the repumping laser in laser cooling experiments of 85Rb. For our experimental conditions, which include initial laser powers of approximately 48 mW (for each laser), it was observed that the atom cloud was still visible after reducing the power of the cooling laser to 10 ~ W while keeping the power of the repumping laser at its initial level. On the other hand, the atom cloud maintained visibility after reducing the power of the repumping laser to 103 ~ µm W while keeping the power of the excitation laser at its initial level. In both cases the power variation of the lasers is achieved without altering the frequency or tuning characteristics of the lasers.