We report on the attainment of Bose-Einstein condensation of 86Sr. This isotope has a scattering length of about +800 a0 and thus suffers from fast three-body losses. To avoid detrimental atom loss, evaporative cooling is performed at low densities around 3x10^12 cm^-3 in a large volume optical dipole trap. We obtain almost pure condensates of 5x10^3 atoms.
Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) are macroscopic coherent matter waves that have revolutionized quantum science and atomic physics. They are essential to quantum simulation and sensing, for example underlying atom interferometers in space and ambitious tests of Einsteins equivalence principle. The key to dramatically increasing the bandwidth and precision of such matter-wave sensors lies in sustaining a coherent matter wave indefinitely. Here we demonstrate continuous Bose-Einstein condensation by creating a continuous-wave (CW) condensate of strontium atoms that lasts indefinitely. The coherent matter wave is sustained by amplification through Bose-stimulated gain of atoms from a thermal bath. By steadily replenishing this bath while achieving 1000x higher phase-space densities than previous works, we maintain the conditions for condensation. This advance overcomes a fundamental limitation of all atomic quantum gas experiments to date: the need to execute several cooling stages time-sequentially. Continuous matter-wave amplification will make possible CW atom lasers, atomic counterparts of CW optical lasers that have become ubiquitous in technology and society. The coherence of such atom lasers will no longer be fundamentally limited by the atom number in a BEC and can ultimately reach the standard quantum limit. Our development provides a new, hitherto missing piece of atom optics, enabling the construction of continuous coherent matter-wave devices. From infrasound gravitational wave detectors to optical clocks, the dramatic improvement in coherence, bandwidth and precision now within reach will be decisive in the creation of a new class of quantum sensors.
We report on the attainment of Bose-Einstein condensation with ultracold strontium atoms. We use the 84Sr isotope, which has a low natural abundance but offers excellent scattering properties for evaporative cooling. Accumulation in a metastable state using a magnetic-trap, narrowline cooling, and straightforward evaporative cooling in an optical trap lead to pure condensates containing 1.5x10^5 atoms. This puts 84Sr in a prime position for future experiments on quantum-degenerate gases involving atomic two-electron systems.
We report on the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation of erbium atoms and on the observation of magnetic Feshbach resonances at low magnetic field. By means of evaporative cooling in an optical dipole trap, we produce pure condensates of $^{168}$Er, containing up to $7 times 10^{4}$ atoms. Feshbach spectroscopy reveals an extraordinary rich loss spectrum with six loss resonances already in a narrow magnetic-field range up to 3 G. Finally, we demonstrate the application of a low-field Feshbach resonance to produce a tunable dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate and we observe its characteristic d-wave collapse.
We investigate formation of Bose-Einstein condensates under non-equilibrium conditions using numerical simulations of the three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation. For this, we set initial random weakly nonlinear excitations and the forcing at high wave numbers, and study propagation of the turbulent spectrum toward the low wave numbers. Our primary goal is to compare the results for the evolving spectrum with the previous results obtained for the kinetic equation of weak wave turbulence. We demonstrate existence of a regime for which good agreement with the wave turbulence results is found in terms of the main features of the previously discussed self-similar solution. In particular, we find a reasonable agreement with the low-frequency and the high-frequency power-law asymptotics of the evolving solution, including the anomalous power-law exponent $x^* approx 1.24$ for the three-dimensional waveaction spectrum. We also study the regimes of very weak turbulence, when the evolution is affected by the discreteness of the Fourier space, and the strong turbulence regime when emerging condensate modifies the wave dynamics and leads to formation of strongly nonlinear filamentary vortices.
Photons, due to the virtually vanishing photon-photon interaction, constitute to very good approximation an ideal Bose gas, but owing to the vanishing chemical potential a (free) photon gas does not show Bose-Einstein condensation. However, this is not necessarily true for a lower-dimensional photon gas. By means of a fluorescence induced thermalization process in an optical microcavity one can achieve a thermal photon gas with freely adjustable chemical potential. Experimentally, we have observed thermalization and subsequently Bose-Einstein condensation of the photon gas at room temperature. In this paper, we give a detailed description of the experiment, which is based on a dye-filled optical microcavity, acting as a white-wall box for photons. Thermalization is achieved in a photon number-conserving way by photon scattering off the dye molecules, and the cavity mirrors both provide an effective photon mass and a confining potential - key prerequisites for the Bose-Einstein condensation of photons. The experimental results are in good agreement with both a statistical and a simple rate equation model, describing the properties of the thermalized photon gas.