Study of light-assisted collisions between a few cold atoms in a microscopic dipole trap
Atomic Physics
2015-05-30 v3 Quantum Gases
Quantum Physics
Abstract
We study light-assisted collisions in an ensemble containing a small number (~3) of cold Rb87 atoms trapped in a microscopic dipole trap. Using our ability to operate with one atom exactly in the trap, we measure the one-body heating rate associated to a near-resonant laser excitation, and we use this measurement to extract the two-body loss rate associated to light-assisted collisions when a few atoms are present in the trap. Our measurements indicate that the two-body loss rate can reach surprisingly large values beta>10^{-8} cm^{3}.s^{-1} and varies rapidly with the trap depth and the parameters of the excitation light.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1107.5781,
title = {Study of light-assisted collisions between a few cold atoms in a microscopic dipole trap},
author = {A. Fuhrmanek and R. Bourgain and Y. R. P. Sortais and A. Browaeys},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.5781},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
6 pages, 7 figures