Single-beam all-optical ^87Rb BEC

Leif Humbert, Marie Noelle Peron, Jessica Butcher +4 more

Hari Prasad Mishra, Adonis Silva Flores, W. Vassen +1 more

We have realized Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of 87Rb in the F = 2, m F = 2 hyperfine substate in a hybrid trap, consisting of a quadrupole magnetic field and a single optical dipole beam. The symmetry axis of the quadrupole magnetic trap coincides with the optical beam axis, which gives stronger axial confinement than previous hybrid traps. After loading 2 × 106 atoms at 14 μK from a quadrupole magnetic trap into the hybrid trap, we perform efficient forced evaporation and reach the onset of BEC at a temperature of 0.5 μK and with 4 × 105 atoms. We also obtain thermal clouds of 1 × 106 atoms below 1 μK in a pure single beam optical dipole trap, by ramping down the magnetic field gradient after evaporative cooling in the hybrid trap.

E. Arimondo, Donatella Ciampini, Hans Lignier +2 more

Leif Humbert, Mark A. Baker, D. Sigle +5 more

We report on our progress towards realization of a toroidal trap for Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of 87Rb using a time-averaged optical dipole potential. To achieve BEC we utilize a 20 W laser operating at 1064 nm to form an optical dipole trap in which we evaporatively cool the gas . Loading of the dipole trap is achieved by overlapping the dipole beams with a standard magnetic optical trap. Evaporative cooling is first performed in a single beam trap, followed by compression and additional confinement with a second orthogonal beam. This prevents stagnation of the evaporative cooling cycle, and allows the gain of 105 in phase space density necessary to achieve quantum degeneracy.

Leif Humbert, Mark A. Baker, D. Sigle +5 more

We report on our progress towards realization of a toroidal trap for Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of 87Rb using a time-averaged optical dipole potential. To achieve BEC we utilize a 20 W laser operating at 1064 nm to form an optical dipole trap in which we evaporatively cool the gas. Loading of the dipole trap is achieved by overlapping the dipole beams with a standard magnetic optical trap. Evaporative cooling is first performed in a single beam trap, followed by compression and additional confinement with a second orthogonal beam. This prevents stagnation of the evaporative cooling cycle, and allows the gain of 105 in phase space density necessary to achieve quantum degeneracy.

Dwight Whitaker, Leon Webster, Naim Majdalani +1 more