Field-insensitive Bose-Einstein condensates and an all-optical atom laser

Martin Weitz

Giovanni Cennini, Gunnar Ritt, Carsten Geckeler +1 more

Giovanni Cennini, Gunnar Ritt, Carsten Geckeler +1 more

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.

S. Martellucci, M. Inguscio, Alain Aspect +1 more

Giovanni Cennini, Gunnar Ritt, Carsten Geckeler +1 more

A Bose-Einstein condensate with atoms in a magnetic field-insensitive spin projection was created by direct evaporative cooling in a single-beam optical dipole trap. Condensed atoms were extracted to realize a novel type of atom laser.

N. Lundblad, R. J. Thompson, D. C. Aveline +1 more

We demonstrate a novel dual-beam atom laser formed by outcoupling oppositely polarized components of an all-optical F = 1 spinor Bose-Einstein condensate whose Zeeman sublevel populations have been coherently evolved through spin dynamics. The condensate is formed through all-optical means using a single-beam running-wave dipole trap. We create a condensate in the magnetic field-insensitive m(F) = 0 state, and drive coherent spin-mixing evolution through adiabatic compression of the initially weak trap. Such dual beams, number-correlated through the angular momentum-conserving reaction 2m(0) ?m(+1) +m(-1), have been proposed as tools to explore entanglement and squeezing in Bose-Einstein condensates, and have potential use in precision phase measurements.