Related papers: Cooling atoms in an optical trap by selective para…
Sideband cooling is a popular method for cooling atoms to the ground state of an optical trap. Applying the same method to molecules requires a number of challenges to be overcome. Strong tensor Stark shifts in molecules cause the optical…
We investigate laser cooling of an ensemble of atoms in an optical cavity. We demonstrate that when atomic dipoles are sychronized in the regime of steady-state superradiance, the motion of the atoms may be subject to a giant frictional…
We observe the spontaneous evaporation of atoms confined in a bubble-like rf-dressed trap (Zobay and Garraway, 2001). The atoms are confined in a quadrupole magnetic trap and are dressed by a linearly polarized rf field. The evaporation is…
A new trap for atoms and small particles based on the interaction between an atom and the field of counter-propagating light pulses that are partially superposed in time has been proposed. A substantial difference from the known analogs…
Frictionless atom cooling in harmonic traps is formulated as a time-optimal control problem and a synthesis of optimal controlled trajectories is obtained.
We study the dissipative dynamics of neutral atoms in anisotropic harmonic potentials, immersed in a reservoir species that is not trapped by the harmonic potential. Considering initial motional excitation of the atoms along one direction,…
Magneto-optical traps are central to atomic and molecular quantum technologies and precision tests of fundamental physics, where both sensitivity and bandwidth scale strongly with atom number and loading rate. We demonstrate that employing…
We experimentally investigate $\sigma^+$-$\sigma^-$ polarization gradient cooling~(PGC) of a single $^{87}$Rb atom in a tightly focused dipole trap and show that the cooling limit strongly depends on the polarization of the trapping field.…
The wave function of a moderately cold atom in a stationary near-resonant standing light wave delocalizes very fast due to wave packet splitting. However, we show that frequency modulation of the field may suppress packet splitting for some…
We demonstrate a Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT) configuration which employs optical forces due to light scattering between electronically excited states of the atom. With the standard MOT laser beams propagating along the {\it x}- and {\it y}-…
We report on trapping of fermionic 40K atoms in a red-detuned standing-wave optical trap, loaded from a magneto-optical trap. Typically, 10^6 atoms are loaded at a density of 10^12 cm^-3 and a temperature of 65 microK, and trapped for more…
In recent years, cold atoms could prove their scientific impact not only on ground but in microgravity environments such as the drop tower in Bremen, sounding rockets and parabolic flights. We investigate the preparation of cold atoms in an…
We demonstrate the ability to load, cool and detect singly-charged calcium ions in a surface electrode trap using only visible and infrared lasers for the trapped-ion control. As opposed to the standard methods of cooling using…
Ultracold atoms at temperatures close to the recoil limit have been achieved by extending Doppler cooling to forbidden transitions. A cloud of ^40Ca atoms has been cooled and trapped to a temperature as low as 6 \mu K by operating a…
We study the dynamics of atoms in optical traps when exposed to laser cooling light that induces light-assisted collisions. We experimentally prepare individual atom pairs and observe their evolution. Due to the simplicity of the system…
We present a versatile and compact electron beam driven source for alkali metal atoms, which can be implemented in cryostats. With a heat load of less than 10mW, the heat dissipation normalized to the atoms loaded into the magneto-optical…
It is shown theoretically how to directly obtain the energy distribution of a weakly interacting gas of bosons confined in an optical lattice in the tight-binding limit. This is accomplished by adding a linear potential to a suitably…
We demonstrate loading of SrF molecules into an optical dipole trap (ODT) via in-trap $\Lambda$-cooling. We find that this cooling can be optimized by a proper choice of relative ODT and $\Lambda$ beam polarizations. In this optimized…
We investigate the dynamics of an ion sympathetically cooled by another laser-cooled ion or small ion crystal. To this end, we develop simple models of the cooling dynamics in the limit of weak Coulomb interactions. Experimentally, we…
We have integrated magneto-optical traps (MOTs) into an atom chip by etching pyramids into a silicon wafer. These have been used to trap atoms on the chip, directly from a room temperature vapor of rubidium. This new atom trapping method…