Development of a System for Optical Atom Chip Experiments with Rubidium

Megan Ivory, Austin R. Ziltz, Charles Fancher +3 more

Evan A. Salim, Megan Ivory, Cameron Straatsma +1 more

Megan Ivory, Austin R. Ziltz, Charles Fancher +7 more

We present a dual chamber atom chip apparatus for generating ultracold (87)Rb and (39)K atomic gases. The apparatus produces quasi-pure Bose-Einstein condensates of 10(4) (87)Rb atoms in an atom chip trap that features a dimple and good optical access. We have also demonstrated production of ultracold (39)K and subsequent loading into the chip trap. We describe the details of the dual chamber vacuum system, the cooling lasers, the magnetic trap, the multicoil magnetic transport system, the atom chip, and two optical dipole traps. Due in part to the use of light-induced atom desorption, the laser cooling chamber features a sufficiently good vacuum to also support optical dipole trap-based experiments. The apparatus is well suited for studies of atom-surface forces, quantum pumping and transport experiments, atom interferometry, novel chip-based traps, and studies of one-dimensional many-body systems.

Soizic Hello, Henk Snijders, B. Wirtschafter +6 more

We miniaturized the complex optical system responsible for the cooling, pumping, and imaging of an on-chip-based cold-atom inertial sensor. This optical bench uses bonded miniature optics and includes all the necessary optical functions. The bench has a volume of 35×25×5cm 3 . We developed a laser frequency lock adapted to the optical bench using saturated absorption in a rubidium cell. The entire laser source based on frequency doubling of 1.56 µm fiber lasers, including the control system and the saturated absorption module, fits in a 5 U rack. Using the miniaturized bench, we realized two- and three-dimensional magneto-optical traps for rubidium 87 atoms.

Londero, Slepkov, Bhagwat +4 more

Kasturi Saha, Pablo Londero, Jacob S. Levy +5 more