English

A proposal for continuous loading of an optical dipole trap with magnetically guided ultra cold atoms

Quantum Physics 2009-12-14 v1 Atomic Physics

Abstract

The capture of a moving atom by a non-dissipative trap, such as an optical dipole trap, requires the removal of the excessive kinetic energy of the atom. In this article we develop a mechanism to harvest ultra cold atoms from a guided atom beam into an optical dipole trap by removing their directed kinetic energy. We propose a continuous loading scheme where this is accomplished via deceleration by a magnetic potential barrier followed by optical pumping to the energetically lowest Zeeman sublevel. We theoretically investigate the application of this scheme to the transfer of ultra cold chromium atoms from a magnetically guided atom beam into a deep optical dipole trap. We discuss the realization of a suitable magnetic field configuration. Based on numerical simulations of the loading process we analyze the feasibility and efficiency of our loading scheme.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0912.2244,
  title  = {A proposal for continuous loading of an optical dipole trap with magnetically guided ultra cold atoms},
  author = {Anoush Aghajani-Talesh and Markus Falkenau and Axel Griesmaier and Tilman Pfau},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0912.2244},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures