We report the production of 87Rb Bose–Einstein condensate in an asymmetric crossed optical dipole trap (ACODT) without the need of an additional dimple laser. In our experiment, the ACODT is formed by two laser beams with different radii to achieve efficient capture and rapid evaporation of laser cooled atoms. Compared to the cooling procedure in a magnetic trap, the atoms are firstly laser cooled and then directly loaded into an ACODT without the pre-evaporative cooling process. In order to determine the optimal parameters for evaporation cooling, we optimize the power ratio of the two beams and the evaporation time to maximize the final atom number left in the ACODT. By loading about 6 × 105 laser cooled atoms in the ACODT, we obtain a pure Bose–Einstein condensate with about 1.4 × 104 atoms after 19 s evaporation. Additionally, we demonstrate that the fringe-type noises in optical density distributions can be reduced via principal component analysis, which correspondingly improves the reliability of temperature measurement.
We report on the production of
52Cr Bose-Einstein condensates with an all-optical method. We first load $5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}$ metastable chromium atoms in a one-dimensional (1D) far-off-resonance optical trap (FORT) from a magneto-optical trap, by combining the use of radio-frequency sweeps and depumping toward the
5S2 state. The atoms are then pumped to the absolute ground state, and transferred into a crossed FORT in which they are evaporated. The fast loading of the 1D FORT (
35ms 1∕e time) and the use of relatively fast evaporative ramps allow us to obtain in
20s about
15000 atoms in an almost pure condensate.
Summary form only given. Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) are generally produced by evaporative cooling of laser cooled atomic samples in magnetic traps. Though magnetic traps are indispensable for the production of a BEC, they pose restrictions on the possible studies with a BEC. Previous experiments of our group have demonstrated that it is possible to trap a BEC in the circular focus of a far-detuned infrared laser beam. This first realization of an optical dipole trap (ODT) for BEC was used to prepare and investigate spinor condensates of Na atoms in the F=1 hyperfine manifold. However, the initial peak density in this ODT after loading from the magnetic trap reached 10/sup 15/ atoms/cm/sup 3/, leading to rapid losses due to three-body collisions. To realize an ODT capable of storing large condensates for a long time, we have used a laser beam with an elliptical beam profile. The optical trap is loaded by superimposing the light field onto the magnetic trap and then slowly turning off the magnetic fields. The transfer efficiency is close to 100%, and thus more than 10/sup 7/ Bose-condensed atoms can be loaded into the ODT.