The effect of laser beam size in a zig-zag collimator on transverse cooling of a krypton atomic beam

The effect of size of a cooling laser beam in a zig-zag atomic beam collimator on transverse cooling of a krypton atomic beam is investigated. The simulation results show that discreteness in the interaction between the cooling laser beam and atomic beam, arising due to finite size and incidence angle of the cooling laser beam, significantly reduces the value of transverse velocity capture range of the collimator. The experimental observations show the trend similar to that obtained from simulations. Our study can be particularly useful where a small zig-zag collimator is required.