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Physical Review A

Multipartite model of evaporative cooling in optical dipole traps

Matthew J. Williams, Chad Fertig

Published Feb 27, 2015• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose and study a model of forced evaporation of atomic clouds in crossed-beam optical dipole traps that explicitly includes the growth of a population in the ``wings'' of the trap and its subsequent impact on dimple temperature and density. It has long been surmised that a large wing population is an impediment to the efficient production of Bose-Einstein condensates in crossed-beam traps. Understanding the effect of the wings is particularly important for $\ensuremath{\lambda}=1.06\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$ traps, for which a large ratio of Rayleigh range to beam waist results in wings that are large in volume and extend far from the dimple. Key ingredients to our model's realism are (1) our explicit treatment of the nonthermal, time-dependent energy distribution of wing atoms in the full anharmonic potential and (2) our accurate estimations of transition rates among dimple, wing, and free-atom populations, obtained with Monte Carlo simulations of atomic trajectories. We apply our model to trap configurations in which neither, one, or both of the wing potentials are made unbound by applying a ``tipping'' gradient. We find that forced evaporation in a trap with two bound wing potentials produces a large wing population which can collisionally heat the dimple so strongly as to preclude reaching quantum degeneracy. Evaporation in a trap with one unbound wing, such as that made by crossing one vertical beam and one horizontal beam, also leads to a persistent wing population which dramatically degrades the evaporation process. However, a trap with both wings tilted so as to be just unbound enjoys a nearly complete recovery of efficient evaporation. By introducing to our physical model an ad hoc, tunable escape channel for wing atoms, we study the effect of partially filled wings, finding that a wing population caused by single-beam potentials can drastically slow down evaporative cooling and increase the sensitivity to the choice of $\ensuremath{\eta}$.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.91.023432

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We propose and study a model of forced evaporation of atomic clouds in crossed-beam optical dipole traps that explicitly includes the growth of a population in the wings'' of the trap and its subsequent impact on dimple temperature and density. It has long been surmised that a large wing population is an impediment to the efficient production of Bose-Einstein condensates in crossed-beam traps. Understanding the effect of the wings is particularly important for $\ensuremath{\lambda}=1.06\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$ traps, for which a large ratio of Rayleigh range to beam waist results in wings that are large in volume and extend far from the dimple. Key ingredients to our model's realism are (1) our explicit treatment of the nonthermal, time-dependent energy distribution of wing atoms in the full anharmonic potential and (2) our accurate estimations of transition rates among dimple, wing, and free-atom populations, obtained with Monte Carlo simulations of atomic trajectories. We apply our model to trap configurations in which neither, one, or both of the wing potentials are made unbound by applying a tipping'' gradient. We find that forced evaporation in a trap with two bound wing potentials produces a large wing population which can collisionally heat the dimple so strongly as to preclude reaching quantum degeneracy. Evaporation in a trap with one unbound wing, such as that made by crossing one vertical beam and one horizontal beam, also leads to a persistent wing population which dramatically degrades the evaporation process. However, a trap with both wings tilted so as to be just unbound enjoys a nearly complete recovery of efficient evaporation. By introducing to our physical model an ad hoc, tunable escape channel for wing atoms, we study the effect of partially filled wings, finding that a wing population caused by single-beam potentials can drastically slow down evaporative cooling and increase the sensitivity to the choice of \ensuremathη\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremathη.
We discuss our experimental results on forced evaporative cooling of cold rubidium 87 Rb atoms to quantum degeneracy in an Optical Dipole Trap. The atoms are first trapped and cooled in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) loaded from a continuous beam of cold atoms [1]. More than 10 10 atoms are trapped in the MOT and then about 10 8 atoms are transferred to a Quasi-Electrostatic Trap (QUEST) formed by tightly focused CO2 laser (λ = 10.6μ m ) beams intersecting at their foci in an orthogonal configuration in the horizontal plane. Before loading the atoms into the dipole trap, the phase-space density of the atomic ensemble was increased making use of sub-doppler cooling at large detuning and the temporal dark MOT technique. In a MOT the phase-space density of the atomic ensemble is six orders of magnitude less than what is required to achieve quantum degeneracy. After transferring atoms into the dipole trap efficiently, phase-space density increases by a factor of 10 3 . Further increase in phase-space density to quantum degeneracy is achieved by forced evaporative cooling of atoms in the dipole trap. The evaporative cooling process involves a gradual reduction of the trap depth by ramping down the trapping laser intensity over a second. The temperature of the cold atomic cloud was measured by time-of-flight (TOF) technique. The spatial distribution of the atoms is measured using absorption imaging. We report results of evaporative cooling in a single beam and in a crossed double-beam dipole traps. Due to the large initial phase space density, and large initial number of atoms trapped, the quantum phase transition occurs after about 600 ms of evaporative cooling in our optimized crossed dipole trap.
We describe several routes to quantum degenerate gases based on simple schemes to efficiently load atoms into and evaporate them from a ``dimple'' crossed dipolar trap. The dimple is loaded nonadiabatically by collisions between atoms which are trapped in a reservoir which can be provided either by a dark spontaneous-force magneto-optical trap (MOT), the (aberrated) laser beam itself, or by a quadrupolar or quadratic magnetic trap. Optimal loading parameters for the dimple, relatively high temperature, and tight optical trap are derived from thermodynamic equations including possible inelastic and Majorana losses. Evaporative cooling is described by a set of simple equations, taking into account gravity, the possible occurrence of the hydrodynamical regime, Feshbach resonances, and three body recombination. The solution implies that to have efficient evaporation the elastic collisional rate (in ${\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$) must be on the order of the trap frequency and lower than 100 times the temperature in microkelvins. Following this approach Bose-Einstein condensates with more than 107{10}^{7}107 atoms should be obtained in much less than 1s1\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{s}1s starting from an ordinary MOT setup.
We report on the realization of a sodium Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in a combined red-detuned optical dipole trap formed by two beams crossing in a horizontal plane and a third, tightly focused dimple trap (dT) propagating vertically. We produce a BEC in three main steps: loading of the crossed dipole trap from laser-cooled atoms, an intermediate evaporative cooling stage that results in efficient loading of the auxiliary dT, and a final evaporative cooling stage in the dT. Our protocol is implemented in a compact setup and allows us to reach quantum degeneracy even with relatively modest initial atom numbers and available laser power.
We report on the realization of a sodium Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in a combined red-detuned optical dipole trap, formed by two beams crossing in a horizontal plane and a third, tightly focused dimple trap propagating vertically. We produce a BEC in three main steps: loading of the crossed dipole trap from laser-cooled atoms, an intermediate evaporative cooling stage which results in efficient loading of the auxiliary dimple trap, and a final evaporative cooling stage in the dimple trap. Our protocol is implemented in a compact setup and allows us to reach quantum degeneracy even with relatively modest initial atom numbers and available laser power. 1.
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.
A Bose–Einstein condensate with a large atom number is an important experimental platform for quantum simulation and quantum information research. An optical dipole trap is the a conventional way to hold the ultracold atoms, where an atomic cloud is evaporatively cooled down before reaching the Bose–Einstein condensate. A carefully designed trap depth controlling curve is typically required to realize the optimal evaporation cooling. We present and demonstrate a simple way to optimize the evaporation cooling in a crossed optical dipole trap. A polyline shape optical power control profile is easily obtained with our method, by which a pure Bose–Einstein condensate with atom number 1.73 × 105 is produced. Theoretically, we numerically simulate the optimal evaporation cooling using the parameters of our apparatus based on a kinetic theory. Compared to the simulation results, our evaporation cooling shows a good performance. We believe that our simple method can be used to quickly realize evaporation cooling in optical dipole traps.