Related papers: A Moving Magnetic Trap Decelerator: a New Source f…
Metastable calcium atoms, produced in a magneto-optic trap (MOT) operating within the singlet system, are continuously loaded into a magnetic trap formed by the magnetic quadrupole field of the MOT. At MOT temperatures of 3 mK and 240 ms…
Beams of polar molecules can be focused using an array of electrostatic lenses in alternating gradient (AG) configuration. They can also be accelerated or decelerated by applying an appropriate high voltage switching sequence to the lenses.…
Laser cooling on weak transitions is a useful technique for reaching ultracold temperatures in atoms with multiple valence electrons. However, for strongly magnetic atoms a conventional narrow-line magneto-optical trap (MOT) is destabilized…
We describe the setup to create a large Bose-Einstein condensate containing more than 120x10^6 atoms. In the experiment a thermal beam is slowed by a Zeeman slower and captured in a dark-spot magneto-optical trap (MOT). A typical dark-spot…
According to the adiabatic approximation atoms moving in a magnetic trap keep their magnetic states. We investigate the validity of this approximation for quantum condensates, where a change of field's direction generates effective…
We present a realization of a magneto-optical trap of mercury atoms on the intercombination line. We report on trapping of all stable mercury isotopes. We characterize the effect of laser detuning, laser intensity, and gradient field on the…
We report measurements on the guiding of cold $^{87}$Rb atoms from a magneto-optical trap by a continuous light beam over a vertical distance of 6.5 mm. For moderate laser power ($<$85 mW) we are able to capture around 40% of the cold…
A scheme for fast, compact, and controllable acceleration of heavy particles in vacuum has been recently proposed [F. Peano et al., New J. Phys. 10 033028 (2008)], wherein two counterpropagating laser beams with variable frequencies drive a…
We describe a simple experimental technique which allows us to store a small and deterministic number of neutral atoms in an optical dipole trap. The desired atom number is prepared in a magneto-optical trap overlapped with a single focused…
A continuously operated electrostatic trap for polar molecules is demonstrated. The trap has a volume of ~0.6 cm^3 and holds molecules with a positive Stark shift. With deuterated ammonia from a quadrupole velocity filter, a trap density of…
The physics of superconducting films, and especially the role of remnant magnetization has a defining influence on the magnetic fields used to hold and manipulate atoms on superconducting atomchips. We magnetically trap ultracold ^{87}Rb…
We demonstrate a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap (MOT) of a metal hydride molecule, CaH. We are able to scatter $\sim$$10^{4}$ photons with vibrational loss covered up to vibrational quantum number $\nu=2$. This allows us to laser…
We describe the realization of a magnetically guided beam of cold rubidium atoms, with a flux of $7\times 10^9$ atoms/s, a temperature of 400 $\mu$K and a mean velocity of 1 m/s. The rate of elastic collisions within the beam is sufficient…
We have developed a compact partially ferromagnetic electromagnet to produce a Ioffe-Pritchard trap for neutral atoms. Our structure permits strong magnetic confinement with low power consumption. Compared to the previous iron-core…
We demonstrate laser slowing of a hot thulium atomic beam using the nearly closed cycling transition…
We propose a scheme to transfer molecules from a slow beam into an optical trap using only a single photon absorption and emission cycle. The efficiency of such a scheme is numerically explored for BaF using realistic experimental…
Polar molecules are desirable systems for quantum simulations and cold chemistry. Molecular ions are easily trapped, but a bias electric field applied to polarize them tends to accelerate them out of the trap. We present a general solution…
This paper is a short introduction to cold atom physics and Bose-Einstein condensation. Light forces on atoms are presented, together with laser cooling, and a few atom traps: the magneto-optical trap, dipole traps and magnetic traps. A…
We demonstrate slowing and longitudinal cooling of a supersonic beam of CaF molecules using counter-propagating laser light resonant with a closed rotational and almost closed vibrational transition. A group of molecules are decelerated by…
Highly sensitive, non-destructive, real-time spectroscopic determination of the 2D kinetic momentum distribution of a cold-atom sample is performed with the three-beam measurement of the recoil-induced resonances. The measurements performed…