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arXiv:0804.0060 · Physical Review A

Accelerating evaporative cooling of atoms into Bose-Einstein condensation in optical traps

Chen-Lung Hung, Xibo Zhang, Nathan Gemelke, Cheng Chin

Published Jul 24, 2008• 137 citations
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Abstract

We demonstrate a simple scheme to achieve fast, accelerating (runaway) evaporative cooling of optically trapped atoms by tilting the optical potential with a magnetic field gradient. Runaway evaporation is possible in this trap geometry due to the weak dependence of vibration frequencies on trap depth, which preserves atomic density during the evaporation process. Using this scheme, we show that Bose-Einstein condensation with $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{5}$ cesium atoms can be realized in $2--4\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{s}$ of forced evaporation. The evaporation speed and energetics are consistent with the three-dimensional evaporation picture, despite the fact that atoms can only leave the trap in the direction of tilt.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.011604

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We demonstrate a simple scheme to achieve fast, accelerating (runaway) evaporative cooling of optically trapped atoms by tilting the optical potential with a magnetic field gradient. Runaway evaporation is possible in this trap geometry due to the weak dependence of vibration frequencies on trap depth, which preserves atomic density during the evaporation process. Using this scheme, we show that Bose-Einstein condensation with \ensuremath∼105\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{5}\ensuremath∼105 cesium atoms can be realized in 2−−4s2--4\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{s}2−−4s of forced evaporation. The evaporation speed and energetics are consistent with the three-dimensional evaporation picture, despite the fact that atoms can only leave the trap in the direction of tilt.
We demonstrate runaway evaporative cooling directly with a tightly confining optical-dipole trap and achieve fast production of condensates of $1.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{5}$ 87Rb^{87}\text{R}\text{b}87Rb atoms. Our scheme uses a misaligned crossed-beam far off-resonance optical-dipole trap (MACRO-FORT). It is characterized by independent control of the trap confinement and depth allowing forced all-optical evaporation in the runaway regime. Although our configuration is particularly well suited to the case of 87Rb^{87}\text{R}\text{b}87Rb atoms in a 1565 nm optical trap, where an efficient initial loading is possible, our scheme is general and will allow all-optical evaporative cooling at constant stiffness for every optically trappable atomic or even molecular species.
We present a rapid evaporative cooling scheme for a strongly interacting 6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li Fermi gas in an optical dipole trap. The method uses a magnetic-field-gradient--induced tilt of the trapping potential to accelerate cooling in the unitarity-limited regime. In evaporation based only on lowering the optical trap depth, the unitarity-limited scattering cross section can support runaway cooling; however, the cooling rate slows around T/TF≃0.5T/T_F \simeq 0.5T/TF​≃0.5, and the runaway behavior is no longer maintained. We improve on this approach by applying a magnetic-field gradient when the gas temperature reaches about half the Fermi temperature. The induced tilt opens an escape channel for energetic atoms while keeping the trap frequencies nearly unchanged. This modification increases the cooling speed and cools the gas below the superfluid transition temperature, reaching T/TF=0.16T/T_F = 0.16T/TF​=0.16 on a timescale of ∼25 ms\sim 25\,\mathrm{ms}∼25ms. Our results provide a simple and robust route for rapidly cooling a strongly interacting Fermi gas into the superfluid regime, facilitating studies of the physics of unitary Fermi superfluids.
The Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of 133Cs atoms offers an appealing platform for studying the many-body physics of interacting Bose quantum gases, owing to the rich Feshbach resonances that can be readily achieved in the low magnetic field region. However, it is notoriously difficult to cool 133Cs atoms to their quantum degeneracy. Here we report a hybrid evaporative cooling of 133Cs atoms to BEC. Our approach relies on a combination of the magnetically tunable evaporation with the optical evaporation of atoms in a magnetically levitated optical dipole trap overlapping with a dimple trap. The magnetic field gradient is reduced for the magnetically tunable evaporation. The subsequent optical evaporation is performed by lowering the depth of the dimple trap. We study the dependence of the peak phase space density (PSD) and temperature on the number of atoms during the evaporation process, as well as how the PSD and atom number vary with the trap depth. The results are in excellent agreement with the equation model for evaporative cooling.
We have evaporatively cooled caesium atoms in a magnetic trap to temperatures as low as 8 nK and produced a final phase space density within a factor of four of that required for the onset of Bose–Einstein condensation. At the end of the forced radio-frequency evaporation, 1500 atoms in the F = 3, m F = −3 state remain in the magnetic trap. We observe a decrease in the one-dimensional evaporative cooling efficiency at very low temperatures as the trapped sample enters the collisionally thick (hydrodynamic) regime. To alleviate this problem we propose a modified trapping scheme where three-dimensional evaporation is possible. In addition, we report measurements of the two-body inelastic collision rates for caesium atoms as a function of magnetic field. We confirm the positions, with reduced uncertainties, of three previously identified resonances at magnetic fields of 108.87(6), 118.46(3) and 133.52(3) G.
We report a rapid evaporative cooling method using a hybrid trap which is composed of a quadrupole magnetic trap and a one-beam optical dipole trap. It contains two kinds of evaporative coolings to reach the quantum degeneracy: initial radio-frequency (RF) enforced evaporative cooling in the quadrupole magnetic trap and further runaway evaporative cooling in the optical dipole trap. The hybrid trap does not require a very high power laser such as that in the traditional pure optical trap, but still has a deep trap depth and a large trap volume, and has better optical access than the normal magnetic trap like the quadrupole-Ioffe-configuration (QUIC) cloverleaf trap. A high trap frequency can be easily realized in the hybrid trap to enhance the elastic collision rate and shorten the evaporative cooling time. In our experiment, pure Bose—Einstein condensates (BECs) with about 1 × 10 5 atoms can be realized in 6 s evaporative cooling in the optical dipole trap.