The construction of an apparatus capable of producing Bose-Einstein condensates marks a significant milestone in every experimental cold atom laboratory. In this thesis I describe the development of a system to create a Bose-Einstein condensate of $^{87}Rb$ in a Time-Orbiting Potential trap.\n\nI review the optical and magnetic techniques required to trap and cool an atomic sample under vacuum, motivating our decision to build a double MOT system comprised of a high-pressure ($10^{-9}$ torr) chamber to gather atoms and a low-pressure ($10^{-11}$ torr) chamber to cool atoms to degeneracy.\n\nBy theoretically modeling the atom number and temperature inside the magnetic trap during evaporative cooling I demonstrate a simple approach to determining a cooling path that reaches the transition temperature. By making use of the condensates produced under these non-optimized conditions I determine the heating rate of the condensate in the TOP trap to be $300$ nK/s. I further use the condensates to make a more precise measurement of the TOP trap bias field.\n\nI improve upon the conventional evaporation path used in TOP trap experiments by introducing and optimizing additional bias field compression stages in between RF evaporation ramps. I demonstrate how, by adding these additional stages, the system is capable of reaching the BEC phase transition with a final atom number of $2\\times 10^{5}$. In contrast, RF evaporation after only a single bias field ramp has yielded condensates with only $30\\times 10^3$ atoms.
The construction of an apparatus capable of producing Bose-Einstein condensates marks a significant milestone in every experimental cold atom laboratory. In this thesis I describe the development of a system to create a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb in a Time-Orbiting Potential trap.\n\nI review the optical and magnetic techniques required to trap and cool an atomic sample under vacuum, motivating our decision to build a double MOT system comprised of a high-pressure (10−9 torr) chamber to gather atoms and a low-pressure (10−11 torr) chamber to cool atoms to degeneracy.\n\nBy theoretically modeling the atom number and temperature inside the magnetic trap during evaporative cooling I demonstrate a simple approach to determining a cooling path that reaches the transition temperature. By making use of the condensates produced under these non-optimized conditions I determine the heating rate of the condensate in the TOP trap to be 300 nK/s. I further use the condensates to make a more precise measurement of the TOP trap bias field.\n\nI improve upon the conventional evaporation path used in TOP trap experiments by introducing and optimizing additional bias field compression stages in between RF evaporation ramps. I demonstrate how, by adding these additional stages, the system is capable of reaching the BEC phase transition with a final atom number of 2times105. In contrast, RF evaporation after only a single bias field ramp has yielded condensates with only 30times103 atoms.
Research on degenerate quantum gases of dilute atomic gases has become a well established field in modern physics and revealed many astonishing phenomena. The first experiments on Bose and Fermi gases at low temperatures aimed to prove the predictions of quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale. Since then we make use of Bose and Fermi gases and mixtures of any combination to model other many body systems. A property of Bose Einstein condensates is superfluidity which we want to investigate further in toroidal potentials with a new apparatus which can produce an all-optical BEC. This means trapping thermal atoms in an optical dipole trap and cooling the sample by evaporation into the quantum degenerate regime. This new technique was first successfully demonstrated by M.D. Barrett et al. in 2001 and promises to be faster and simpler than the well established and common way of evaporation in magnetic traps. A new apparatus was built by the author and we report on the experimental details of the trapping of 87Rb atoms from a hot vapour and cooling them in a magneto-optical trap, and further evaporation to quantum degeneracy in a crossed optical dipole trap operating at a wavelength of l = 1064nm, with accurate control of the power in both beams via a feedback loop. The evaporation of neutral atoms of 87Rb in far red detuned optical dipole traps using linearly polarised laser light is spin independent, and mixed spinor condensates of the F=1 manifold can be formed. As an empirical technique we found by applying a magnetic gradient field during the final evaporation that we can selectively populate mF spin states or prepare mixtures. This intriguing mechanism was found earlier as well by M. S. Chang, but is yet not fully understood and subject of our future research. We can now routinely prepare an almost pure condensate containing up to 7000 atoms in the condensed phase purely in the mF = 0 spin state. This thesis contains the theoretical framework of Bose-Einstein condensation with in mean-field theory, the concepts of cooling of atoms in magneto-optical traps, the trapping and evaporation in optical dipole traps and the experimental realisation. In the future this experiment will be extended by a fast scanning dipole trap to apply arbitrary time averaged potentials of more complex geometries, such as toroidal traps to study the effects of superfluidity in a periodic potential. The production of toroidal traps and cold atoms in such a trap are outlined in this thesis.
In a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), due to extremely low temperatures, wave functions of all particles in the system overlap and form a single macroscopic wavefunction. This brings quantum mechanical effects to the macroscopic scale and allows us to better understand known quantum mechanical laws and effects, as well as develop new ones. In addition to being of fundamental scientific interest, BEC can serve in practical applications, such as quantum metrology, atomic interferometry, and quantum information and communication. Here we describe our approach for producing BECs in 87Rb. To create atomic flux towards our science chamber, a 2-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D-MOT) with push beam is used. The initial atomic cloud is formed in 15s by 3D-MOT and consists of 1e9 atoms at 500uK. After the MOT, atoms are cooled with optical molasses to 50uK and transferred to a quadrupole magnetic trap, where radio-frequency (RF) induced evaporation is performed, which lowers temperature to 10uK. After RF evaporation, the atomic cloud is transferred to a crossed beams optical dipole trap (ODT). During evaporation in the ODT, the temperature is reduced below the critical temperature Tc=286nK, where condensation starts, and eventually reaches 40nK. As a result, a quasi-pure BEC with 1e5 87Rb atoms is formed. The complete sequence from the MOT loading to the BEC formation takes about 30s. Observations of the inversion of the aspect ratio of the cloud during free expansion and a bimodal velocity distribution prove quantum degeneracy. Presented in this thesis are the necessary background for understanding the experimental steps, a description of the schemes and technical details of our setup, and a characterizations of all the experimental steps.
This thesis describes the design, construction and optimisation of a new apparatus to produce Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of 87Rb atoms. The main aim in building this system was to include a high resolution imaging system capable of resolving single atoms. Optical access for the imaging system was created by including a stage of atom transport in which the atoms are magnetically transferred ~50 cm from a magneto-optical trap (MOT), where they are initially collected, to a glass science cell where experiments are carried out and imaging takes place. Two magnetic transport schemes have been demonstrated, based on approaches first used in other laboratories. First, a scheme in which the atoms are transferred in a moving pair of magnetic trapping coils. Second, a hybrid scheme where the atoms are translated part of the distance in the moving coils, and the rest of the way by switching the current in a chain of fixed coils. This second scheme was designed to allow optical access for a high numerical aperture microscope objective to be placed immediately next to the science cell for high resolution imaging.The atoms were first collected in a large pyramid MOT which can be loaded with 3 × 10^9 atoms in a time of 20 s. Around half of these atoms – those in the |F = 1, mF = −1> magnetic substate – were then magnetically trapped prior to transport. The typical fraction of the trapped atoms transferred to the science cell was ~30% and ~18% for the moving coils and hybrid schemes respectively.Evaporative cooling was carried out on the atom cloud following transport with the moving coils and loading into a time-orbiting potential trap. The optimised cooling sequence lasted for 28 s and consistently produced a pure condensate with 5 × 10^5 atoms. A BEC has also been produced by evaporative cooling following hybrid transport. The next experimental steps will be to optimise the hybrid transfer approach further and install the high resolution imaging system.The system is well-placed to continue an ongoing series of experiments in which ultracold atoms are trapped in RF-dressed potentials. These potentials will be used to study low-dimensional quantum gases as well as in experiments where small atom number BECs are rapidly rotated to enter the fractional quantum Hall regime.
The possibility to mould and control pure quantum systems has been offered by the experimental observation of Bose-Einstein condensation, a unique phase of matter when macroscopic quantities of a gas occupy the lowest quantum state. Techniques for creating these degenerate gases vary from laboratory to laboratory; each offers an unique test bed for studying quantum physics on a macroscopic scale. This thesis reports on the experimental design, construction and performance of an apparatus to create two-component 87Rb and 41K condensates for studies of non-equilibrium dynamics. This thesis is broken down as follows. In Chapter 1, a brief overview of the history and status of Bose Einstein condensates is presented, to affirm the motivation behind our work. Chapter 2 then presents the fundamental theory and background information to understand how and why our experiment was built. Chapter 3 describes the bulk of the work undertaken at the beginning of this thesis. In particular it describes the design choices, construction and performance of the vacuum, and laser and magnetic coil systems that are the key structural elements of the apparatus. In particular the vacuum system is a two-component differentially pumped system designed to optimise the number and lifetime of trapped atoms. Another integral element of the vacuum chamber is the science cell that enables high optical access, and close physical, access to an atomic cloud. As a result, high resolution imaging, ≃ 980 nm resolution at 780 nm is expected with a commercial microscope objective lens. The laser system is carefully de- signed to best combine and deliver the seven different optical frequencies required to simultaneously trap and manipulate 87Rb and 41K atoms. The magnetic coil system also represents an integral component of the apparatus, responsible for trapping and transferring atoms in a quadrupole field. One pair of coils is able to have their current direction reversed in order to generate bias fields. This allows access to Feshbach resonances between the two species, once they have been condensed. The second part of this thesis, Chapter 4, describes the performance of the apparatus when used to simultaneously trap 41K and 87Rb in the 3D magneto- optical trap (MOT) and produce a condensate of 87Rb atoms. In particular 1 × 109 rubidium atoms are routinely trapped in the 3D-MOT and transferred to the science chamber. In the hybrid trap the atoms are evaporatively cooled via microwave radiation, later to be used to sympathetically cool 41K, and loaded into a hybrid optical dipole and magnetic trap. At this stage ≃ 5 × 106 atoms are evaporatively cooled, by lowering the trap depth of the optical dipole beam, until a condensate of 87Rb is formed, containing 1.5 × 105 atoms. Additionally we are able to produce 3D MOTs of 41K simultaneously with the 87Rb 3D MOTs.
The long term aim of the work is to study non-equilibrium and symmetry-breaking phenomena for a Bose-Einstein condensate in time-dependent optical traps. The work presented in this thesis is mostly devoted to the design, construction and testing of the apparatus, in which condensation was successfully achieved. The first part of this thesis describes the design and construction of a hybrid setup for the production of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of 87 Rb in the |F = 2, m F = +2 > state. The vacuum system is composed of a first chamber, where a low-velocity intense source (LVIS) of atoms is produced to provide a pre-cooled atomic beam to the science chamber, where the magneto-optical trap (MOT) is produced, trapping more than 3 x 10 8 atoms at a temperature of roughly 400 μK. Forced radio- frequency evaporation is performed in a quadrupole magnetic trap and the atoms are transferred to a hybrid far-detuned optical trap in a crossed-beams configuration; evaporation in the optical potential leads to reliable production of a BEC every 50 s, composed of 10^5 atoms at a temperature of 10-30 nK. To ensure fine control on the optical potential depth and high intensity and pointing stability, a stabilisation system has been developed and characterised. The second part of this thesis describes the realisation of a 1D optical lattice, produced by two phase-locked laser beams emitting at 780 nm, with a red detuning of approximately 3.5 GHz, in counter-propagating configuration. Oscillating forces obtained by phase-modulating the optical potential are applied.
A rapid atomic beam of rubidium (87Rb) is produced by two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D MOT), and then trapped by three-dimensional magneto-optical trap (3D MOT) with high vacuum for further cooling. After a process of optical molasses cooling, atoms are reloaded into a magnetic trap, where radio frequency (RF) evaporation cooling is implemented. The precooled atoms in the magnetic trap are then transferred into a far detuning optical dipole trap, where Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) appears by further evaporation cooling. The 3D MOT is loaded to its maximum within 25 s and then BEC is prepared in 16 s. Due to the linear intensity of magnetic trap, the frequency can be scanned fast in the RF evaporation cooling process. In our experiment, the frequency scans from 39 MHz to 15 MHz in 6 s and then scans to 2 MHz in 5 s. The number of atoms in 3D MOT is about 11010, and there are 5105 atoms in the BEC after a succession of cooling processes. To optimize the performances of 2D MOT, a special light path is constructed. And prisms with high reflectivity are used to reduce the imbalance between opposite propagating cooling +beams. Furthermore, quarter-wave plates are used to keep the polarization state of the cooling beam when reflected by prisms or mirrors. The atoms are cooled to a temperature about 15 K in the magnetic trap by RF evaporation. In such a low temperature, the loss of magnetic trap (Majorana loss) will prevent the atoms from reaching a high density, and the atoms cannot be cooled further. To reduce the loss rate of the magnetic trap, the far blue detuning light (532 nm, 18 W) is added to plug the zero point of the magnetic trap. In the optically plugged magnetic trap, atoms with high density are cooled down enough, which gives a good start for the loading of optical dipole trap.