Related papers: All-Optical Formation of Quantum Degenerate Mixtur…
We demonstrate an atom laser using all-optical techniques. A Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium atoms is created by direct evaporative cooling in a quasistatic dipole trap realized with a single, tightly focused CO$_{2}$-laser beam. An…
Doppler and Sisyphus cooling of $^{174}$YbOH are achieved and studied. This polyatomic molecule has high sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model and represents a new class of species for future high-precision probes of new…
Ultracold gases promise access to many-body quantum phenomena at convenient length and time scales. However, it is unclear whether the entropy of these gases is low enough to realize many phenomena relevant to condensed matter physics, such…
Ytterbium (Yb) is used in cold-atom systems, including magneto-optical traps and optical lattice clocks. However, the long-term operation of such systems may be associated with substantial degradation of optical transmittance through vacuum…
Due to the observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute atomic $^{87}$Rb and $^{23}$Na vapors last year, there is currently a great interest in the properties of a degenerate Bose gas. One aspect that is not yet understood is the…
We investigate experimentally the entropy transfer between two distinguishable atomic quantum gases at ultralow temperatures. Exploiting a species-selective trapping potential, we are able to control the entropy of one target gas in…
We propose a highly efficient and fast method of translational cooling for high-angular-momentum atoms. Optical pumping and stimulated transitions, combined with magnetic forces, can be used to compress phase-space density, and the…
We trap and cool a gas composed of 40K and 87Rb, using a two-species magneto-optical trap (MOT). This trap represents the first step towards cooling the Bose-Fermi mixture to quantum degeneracy. Laser light for the MOT is derived from laser…
We discuss cooling efficiency for different-species Fermi-Bose mixtures in magnetic traps. A better heat capacity matching between the two atomic species is achieved by a proper choice of the Bose cooler and the magnetically trappable…
We present a method to design a finite decay rate for excited rotational states in polar molecules. The setup is based on a hybrid system of polar molecules with atoms driven into a Rydberg state. The atoms and molecules are coupled via the…
We demonstrate the controlled creation of a $\mathrm{^{174}Yb^{2+}}$ ion by photo-ionizing $\mathrm{^{174}Yb^+}$ with weak continuous-wave lasers at ultraviolet wavelengths. The photo-ionization is performed by resonantly exciting…
We theoretically investigate Raman photoassociation of a degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture of atoms and the subsequent prospect for anomalous (Cooper) pairing between atoms and molecules. Stable fermionic molecules are created via…
We explore the interaction between two trapped ions mediated by a surrounding quantum degenerate Bose or Fermi gas. Using perturbation theory valid for weak atom-ion interaction, we show analytically that the interaction mediated by a Bose…
We present a joint experimental and theoretical analysis to assess the adiabatic experimental preparation of ultracold bosons in optical lattices aimed at simulating the three-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model. Thermometry of lattice gases is…
We give an overview of the experiments at the Laser Centre of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam on ultracold gases of metastable helium-4 and helium-3 as well as mixtures of both isotopes. We describe our experimental setup and discuss…
Using a matter wave lens and a long time-of-flight, we cool an ensemble of Rb-87 atoms in two dimensions to an effective temperature of less than $50^{+50}_{-30}$~pK. A short pulse of red-detuned light generates an optical dipole force that…
We propose a general method of cooling -- periodic driving generated by spatially deformed Hamiltonians -- and study it in general one-dimensional quantum critical systems described by a conformal field theory. Our protocol is able to…
Quantum simulation relies on the preparation and control of low-entropy many-body systems to reveal the behavior of classically intractable models. The development of new approaches for realizing such systems therefore represents a frontier…
We implement and demonstrate the effectiveness of a cooling scheme using a moving, all-optical, one-way barrier to cool a sample of $^{87}$Rb atoms, achieving nearly a factor of 2 reduction in temperature. The one-way barrier, composed of…
We provide an introduction to the experimental physics of quantum gases. At the low densities of ultracold quantum gases, confinement can be understood from single-particle physics, and interactions can be understood from two-body physics.…