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Physics World

Condensates made easy

Published Aug 1, 2001• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Research into Bose–Einstein condensation has advanced at a rapid pace since this unique state of matter was first produced in 1995. Now the pace is set to quicken even further with the announcement by three groups of faster and simpler techniques for creating Bose condensates. Physicists at Tübingen University in Germany, and independently at the Ludwig Maximilans University in Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, have formed rubidium condensates in miniaturized traps (amo.phy.gasou.edu/bec.html/popular.html). Meanwhile, a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has demonstrated an all-optical technique for producing condensates (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2001 87 010404).

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/14/8/1

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•Jan 1, 2008•1 citation
Research into Bose–Einstein condensation has advanced at a rapid pace since this unique state of matter was first produced in 1995. Now the pace is set to quicken even further with the announcement by three groups of faster and simpler techniques for creating Bose condensates. Physicists at Tübingen University in Germany, and independently at the Ludwig Maximilans University in Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, have formed rubidium condensates in miniaturized traps (amo.phy.gasou.edu/bec.html/popular.html). Meanwhile, a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has demonstrated an all-optical technique for producing condensates (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2001 87 010404).
A year ago this month, physicists first created a Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter in which a cloud of trapped atoms is cooled so close to absolute zero that their quantum-mechanical waves merge. But with barely 1000 atoms in a condensate that lasted just a few seconds, the researchers could do no more than say they'd done it. Now the field is being transformed by a new atom trap that can create condensates of 5 million sodium atoms that survive for half a minute and a new technique for imaging condensates without destroying them. Several research groups are now probing the size, growth rate, optical properties, and even the viscosity of this new form of matter.
In 1925, Einstein predicted the condensation of bosons into the ground state of the system for low (but finite) temperatures. Several phenomena, including superfluidity and superconductivity have been associated with Bose-Einstein condensation, but these systems interact strongly with their environment and pure Bose-Einstein condensation could not be established. It took 70 years, in which time the laser was discovered, and laser cooling techniques to manipulate atoms in a dilute atomic gas, before Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute atomic gases could be demonstrated in 1995. In the first condensation experiments, BECs were created in a magnetic trap. Since in a magnetic trap not all mF states of the atom can be trapped simultaneously, thereby limiting the number of experiments that can be done, other ways of trapping and generating BECs were sought and found. In 2001, the first all-optical BEC was made, where the dipole force was used to trap atoms in the crossing of two far red detuned laser beams. In an optical dipole trap not only atoms in different internal states can be trapped, but also different atomic species simultaneously. In this thesis, the formation of an all-optical Bose-Einstein condensate with rubidium atoms is presented. Conventional all-optical BECs are usually created in high power CO2 laser dipole traps, or have complicated laser cooling schemes and complex dipole trap setups. In our simple and straightforward setup, we load rubidium atoms from a magneto-optical trap into a crossed optical dipole trap created by a single frequency Yb:YAG laser with a wavelength at 1030 nm. The small wavelength allows for a small diffraction limit, and permits us to use standard optical materials, thus making the experimental setup cost effective. Other attempts to achieve Bose-Einstein condensation in a multi-mode (frequency) fiber laser at 1064 nm failed, because the atom loss was quite high. It is assumed that the multi-mode character of the fiber laser induces Raman transitions in rubidium atoms, thereby heating them. We can trap about ∼ 5E7 atoms in a single beam dipole trap out of ∼ 5E9 atoms trapped in theMOT, and ∼ 350,000 atoms can be trapped in a crossed beam dipole trap due to the smaller trap volume. 70% of the atoms in the dipole trap is optically pumped into one mF state. Quantum degeneracy is reached by evaporatively cooling the atoms in the crossed dipole trap by ramping down the laser power with three linear ramps. We can independently change the power of each beam by an AOM. This allows us to use one beam as an atom waveguide for future experiments. After evaporation, we typically have about 10,000 atoms at a temperature below the critical temperature. We have proved Bose-Einstein condensation by using the anisotropic expansion of a quantum degenerate gas trapped in an anisotropic potential. The aspect ratio of our atom cloud changed during a time of flight from 0.7 to 1.2 in 10 ms, thus proving that we have reached quantum degeneracy. We have about 5,000 condensed atoms in our optical dipole trap at a temperature less than 100 nK. The remaining atoms are thermal. Bose-Einstein condensation is obtained within 8 s, and we can repeat the experiment every 30 s. It should be mentioned that the Bose-Einstein experiment was moved from the ”Leibniz Universität Hannover” to the ”Technische Universität Darmstadt”, and had to be completely rebuilt. All-optical Bose-Einstein condensation was reached within one year after the move. Our Bose-Einstein condensation setup presents an ideal starting point for using our condensates in combination with miniaturized atom optical setups based on our novel microfabricated optical elements. With our microlenses, we can create a number of possible dipole trap configurations, such as the dipole trap array or the cylindrical microlens array. Using microlenses in miniaturized atom optical setups opens a completely new field of coherent atom optics. Also because the tight confinement of the microtraps allows us to load a 3D BEC, a 1D BEC, or a Tonks-Girardeau gas in the micropotentials depending on the density.