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arXiv:1611.01430 · The European Physical Journal D

An ultracold, optically trapped mixture of 87Rb and metastable 4He atoms

Adonis Silva Flores, Hari Prasad Mishra, W. Vassen, Steven Knoop

Published Mar 1, 2017• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report on the realization of an ultracold (<25 μK) mixture of rubidium (87Rb) and metastable triplet helium (4He) in an optical dipole trap. Our scheme involves laser cooling in a dual-species magneto-optical trap, simultaneous MW- and RF-induced forced evaporative cooling in a quadrupole magnetic trap, and transfer to a single-beam optical dipole trap. We observe long trapping lifetimes for the doubly spin-stretched spin-state mixture and measure much shorter lifetimes for other spin-state combinations. We discuss prospects for realizing quantum degenerate mixtures of alkali-metal and metastable helium atoms.

DOI
10.1140/epjd/e2017-70675-y

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We report on the realization of an ultracold (<25 μK) mixture of rubidium (87Rb) and metastable triplet helium (4He) in an optical dipole trap. Our scheme involves laser cooling in a dual-species magneto-optical trap, simultaneous MW- and RF-induced forced evaporative cooling in a quadrupole magnetic trap, and transfer to a single-beam optical dipole trap. We observe long trapping lifetimes for the doubly spin-stretched spin-state mixture and measure much shorter lifetimes for other spin-state combinations. We discuss prospects for realizing quantum degenerate mixtures of alkali-metal and metastable helium atoms.
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We demonstrate a simple scheme to reach Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) of metastable triplet helium atoms using a single-beam optical dipole trap with moderate power of less than 3 W. Our scheme is based on RF-induced evaporative cooling in a quadrupole magnetic trap and transfer to a single-beam optical dipole trap that is located below the magnetic trap center. We transfer 1×1061\times 10^61×106 atoms into the optical dipole trap, with an initial temperature of $$14\,\upmu\hbox{K}$$ , and observe efficient forced evaporative cooling both in a hybrid trap, in which the quadrupole magnetic trap operates just below the levitation gradient, and in the pure optical dipole trap, reaching the onset of BEC with 2×1052\times 10^52×105 atoms and a pure BEC of 5×1045\times 10^45×104 atoms. Our work shows that a single-beam hybrid trap can be applied for a light atom, for which evaporative cooling in the quadrupole magnetic trap is strongly limited by Majorana spin-flips, and the very small levitation gradient limits the axial confinement in the hybrid trap.
We have simultaneously confined rubidium and metastable argon in a dual-species magneto-optical trap (MOT). Here a binary mixture of atomic species from different groups of the periodic table have been optically confined at ultracold temperatures. We describe the apparatus and characterize the individual, single species MOTs and the dual-species MOT. Both fluorescence and ion production are monitored. With both species trapped, we observe $\ensuremath{\sim}5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}$ 85Rb{}^{85}\mathrm{Rb}85Rb atoms and $\ensuremath{\sim}2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}$ 40Ar∗{}^{40}{\mathrm{Ar}}^{*}40Ar∗ atoms. Realization of the dual-species trap opens the way for detailed studies of Penning and associative ionization, photoassociative spectroscopy, and eventually for the production of bound, ultracold RbAr molecules.
We describe an experimental setup designed to produce ultracold trapped gas clouds of fermionic 6Li and bosonic 87Rb. This combination of alkali metals has the potential to reach deeper Fermi degeneracy with respect to other mixtures since it allows for improved heat capacity matching which optimizes sympathetic cooling efficiency. Atomic beams of the two species are independently produced and then decelerated by Zeeman slowers. The slowed atoms are collected into a magneto-optical trap and then transferred into a quadrupole magnetic trap. An ultracold Fermi gas with temperature in the 10−3 T F range should be attainable through selective confinement of the two species via a properly detuned laser beam focused in the center of the magnetic trap.
We report on the optimal production of the Bose and Fermi mixtures with 87Rb and 40K in a crossed optical dipole trap (ODT). We measure the atomic number and lifetime of the mixtures in combination of the spin state |F = 9/2, m F = 9/2〉 of 40K and |1, 1〉 of 87Rb in the ODT, which is larger and longer compared with the combination of the spin state |9/2, 9/2〉 of 40K and |2, 2〉 of 87Rb in the ODT. We observe the atomic numbers of 87Rb and 40K shown in each stage of the sympathetic cooling process while gradually reducing the depth of the optical trap. By optimizing the relative loading time of atomic mixtures in the MOT, we obtain the large atomic number of 40K (∼6 × 106) or the mixtures of atoms with an equal number (∼1.6 × 106) at the end of evaporative cooling in the ODT. We experimentally investigate the evaporative cooling in an enlarged volume of the ODT via adding a third laser beam to the crossed ODT and found that more atoms (8 × 106) and higher degeneracy (T/T F = 0.25) of Fermi gases are obtained. The ultracold atomic gas mixtures pave the way to explore phenomena such as few-body collisions and the Bose–Fermi Hubbard model, as well as for creating ground-state molecules of 87Rb40K.