English

Compensation of gravity on cold atoms by a linear optical potential

Atomic Physics 2020-01-29 v1

Abstract

We demonstrate gravity compensation for an ultracold gas of 87^{87}Rb atoms with a time-averaged optical potential. The position of a far-off-resonance beam is temporally modulated with an acousto-optic deflector to efficiently produce a potential with a linear gradient independent of the atomic magnetic sublevels. We realize compensation of the gravity sag and preparation of a degenerate gas in a trap with weak vertical confinement. Optical gravity compensation will provide the opportunity to perform experiments under microgravity in a laboratory and broaden the scope of cold atom research.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.13497,
  title  = {Compensation of gravity on cold atoms by a linear optical potential},
  author = {Kosuke Shibata and Hidehiko Ikeda and Ryota Suzuki and Takuya Hirano},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.13497},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

5 pages, 5 figures