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arXiv:1307.8282 · New Journal of Physics

An ultra-bright atom laser

Vasiliki Bolpasi, Nikolaos K. Efremidis, Michael Morrissey, Paul C. Condylis, Daniel Sahagún, Mark A. Baker, Wolf von Klitzing

Published Mar 28, 2014• 18 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present a novel, ultra-bright atom laser and an ultra-cold thermal atom beam. Using rf-radiation we strongly couple the magnetic hyperfine levels of 87 Rb atoms in a trapped Bose–Einstein condensate. The resulting time-dependent adiabatic potential forms a trap, which at low rf-frequencies opens just below the condensate and thus allows an extremely bright well-collimated atom laser beam to emerge. As opposed to traditional atom lasers based on weak coupling of the magnetic hyperfine levels, this technique allows us to outcouple atoms at an arbitrarily large rate. We achieve a flux of 4 × 10 7 atom s -1 , a seven fold increase compared to the brightest atom lasers to date. Furthermore, we demonstrate by two orders of magnitude the coldest thermal atom beam (200 nK).

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/16/3/033036

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We present a novel, ultra-bright atom laser and an ultra-cold thermal atom beam. Using rf-radiation we strongly couple the magnetic hyperfine levels of 87 Rb atoms in a trapped Bose–Einstein condensate. The resulting time-dependent adiabatic potential forms a trap, which at low rf-frequencies opens just below the condensate and thus allows an extremely bright well-collimated atom laser beam to emerge. As opposed to traditional atom lasers based on weak coupling of the magnetic hyperfine levels, this technique allows us to outcouple atoms at an arbitrarily large rate. We achieve a flux of 4 × 10 7 atom s -1 , a seven fold increase compared to the brightest atom lasers to date. Furthermore, we demonstrate by two orders of magnitude the coldest thermal atom beam (200 nK).
This thesis describes the development and construction of a machine for producinghigh atom-number Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs). Emphasis is given to thenovel Ioe-Pritchard magnetic trap used, that consists exclusively of circular coils.This allowed us to achieve higher gradients and thus tighter connements [1].This thesis also describes a novel atom-laser output-coupler based on time dependentadiabatic potentials (TDAP) [2]. In this method strong rf elds are usedto deform the trapping potential. Contrary to the traditional weak rf methods thatextracts the atoms from the center of the BEC, the TDAP atom lasers emerge fromthe edge of the condensate. This provides the atom lasers with low divergence.Furthermore, the atoms are outcoupled from the BEC at an arbitrarily large rateleading to uxes per trapped atom sixteen times higher compared to the brightestquasi-continuous atom laser.Finally, presented is the coldest thermal atom beam to date. Using the TDAPoutcoupling, we produced thermal atom beams with temperatures as low as 200 nK,which makes it, by two orders of magnitude, the coldest thermal beam ever observed.Something like that would be very useful for high-resolution spectroscopy of ultracoldcollisions.
A pulsed atom laser is experimentally demonstrated by means of outcoupling coherent atoms from 87 Rb Bose–Einstein condensates in magnetic trap via radio-frequency pulses. To study the strong outcoupling dynamics of the atom laser, the original | F = 2, m F = 2⟩ condensate and the coupled | F = 2, m F = 1⟩ component, both of which overlap in space usually, are separated spatially by collective oscillations. The number of atoms in three of the five Zeeman states are measured and compared with the theoretical results.
Atom lasers based on rf outcoupling from a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate can be described by a set of generalized, coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations (GPEs). If not only one but two radio frequencies are used for outcoupling, the atoms emerging from the trap have two different energies and the total wave function of the untrapped spin state is a coherent superposition which leads to a pulsed atomic beam. We present results for such a situation obtained from a one-dimensional GPE model for magnetically trapped 87Rb{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb in the F=1F=1F=1 state. The wave function of the atomic beam can be approximated by a sum of two Airy functions. In the limit of weak coupling we calculate the intensity analytically.
The atom laser has long been a holy grail within atom physics and with the creation of an atom laser we hope to bring a similar revolution in to the field of atom optics. With the creation of the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in 1995 the path to an atom laser was initiated. An atom laser is continues source of BEC. In a Bose condensate all the atoms occupy the same quantum state and can be described by the same wave function and phase. With an atom laser the De Broglie wavelength of atoms can be much smaller than the wavelength of light. Due to the ultimate control over the atoms the atom laser is very interesting for atom optics, lithography, metrology, etching and deposition of atoms on a surface. All previous atom lasers have been created from atoms coupled out from an existing Bose-Einstein Condensate. There are different approaches but common to them all is that the duration of the output of the atom laser is limited by the size of the initial BEC and they all have a low flux. This leaves the quest to build a continuous high flux atom laser. An alternative approach to a continuous BEC beam is to channel a continuous ultra cold atomic beam into a magnetic guide and then cool this beam down to degeneracy. Cooling down a continuous beam of atoms faces three large problems: The collision rate has to be large enough for effective rethermalization, since evaporative cooling in 2D is not as effective as in 3D and a large thermal conductivity due to atoms with a high angular momentum causes heating downstream in the guide. We have built a 4 meter magnetic guide that is placed on a downward slope with a magnetic barrier in the end. In the guide we load packets of ultra cold rubidium atoms with a frequency rate large enough for the packets to merge together to form a continuous atomic beam. The atomic beam is supersonic and when the beam reaches the end barrier it will return and collide with itself. The collisions lowers the velocity of the beam into subsonic velocities and a shock wave is created between the two velocity regions. In order to conserve number of particle, momentum and enthalpy the density of the atomic beam passing through the shock wave must increase. We have build such a shock wave in an atomic beam and observed the density increase due to this. As an extra feature having a subsonic beam on a downward slope adds an extra density increase due to gravitational compression. Loading ultra cold atoms into a 3D trap from the dense subsonic beam overcomes the problem with 2D cooling and thermal conductivity. This was done and evaporative cooling was applied creating an unprecedented large number rubidium BEC.
We demonstrate an atom laser using all-optical techniques. A Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium atoms is created by direct evaporative cooling in a quasistatic dipole trap realized with a single, tightly focused CO2-laser beam. An applied magnetic field gradient allows the formation of the condensate in a field-insensitive m(F)=0 spin projection only, which suppresses fluctuations of the chemical potential from stray magnetic fields. A collimated and monoenergetic beam of atoms is extracted from the Bose-Einstein condensate by continuously lowering the dipole trapping potential in a controlled way to form a novel type of atom laser.