No Arabic abstract
We report on an efficient production scheme for a large quantum degenerate sample of fermionic lithium. The approach is based on our previous work on narrow-line $ 2S_{1/2}rightarrow 3P_{3/2} $ laser cooling resulting in a high phase-space density of up to $3times10^{-4}$. This allows utilizing a large volume crossed optical dipole trap with a total power of $45,textrm{W}$, leading to high loading efficiency and $8times10^6$ trapped atoms. The same optical trapping configuration is used for rapid adiabatic transport over a distance of $25,textrm{cm}$ in $0.9,textrm{s}$, and subsequent evaporative cooling. With optimized evaporation we achieve a degenerate Fermi gas with $1.7times 10^{6}$ atoms at a temperature of $60 , textrm{nK}$, corresponding to $T/T_{text{F}}=0.16left(2 right)$. Furthermore, the performance is demonstrated by evaporation near a broad Feshbach resonance creating a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate of $3times10^5$ lithium dimers.
We report the first all-optical production of a superfluid Bose-Fermi mixture with two spin states of $^6$Li (fermion) and one spin state of $^7$Li (boson) under the resonant magnetic field of the s-wave Feshbach resonance of the fermions. Fermions are cooled efficiently by evaporative cooling and they serve as coolant for bosons. As a result, a superfluid mixture can be achieved by using a simple experimental apparatus and procedures, as in the case of the all-optical production of a single Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We show that the all-optical method enables us to realize variety of ultracold Bose-Fermi mixtures.
Large clouds of cold atoms prepared in a magneto-optical trap are known to present spatiotemporal instabilities when the frequency of the trapping lasers is brought close to the atomic resonance. This system bears similarities with trapped plasmas where the role of the Coulomb interaction is played by the exchange of scattered photons, and astrophysical objects such as stars whose size is dependent on radiative forces. We present in this paper a study of the phase-space of such instabilities, and reveal different dynamical regimes. Three dimensional simulations of the highly nonlinear atomic dynamics permit a detailed analysis of the experimental observations.
We report on highly effective trapping of cold atoms by a new method for a stable single optical trap in the near-optical resonant regime. An optical trap with the near-optical resonance condition consists of not only the dipole but also the radiative forces, while a trap using a far-off resonance dominates only the dipole force. We estimate a near-optical resonant trap for ultracold rubidium atoms in the range between -0.373 and -2.23 THz from the resonance. The time dependence of the trapped atoms indicates some difference of the stable center-of-mass positions in the near-optical resonant trap, and also indicates that the differences are caused by the change of the equilibrium condition of the optical dipole and radiative forces. A stable position depends only on laser detuning due to the change in the radiative force; however, the position is ineffective against the change in the laser intensity, which results in a change in the radiative force.
We describe an experimental setup for producing a large cold erbium (Er) sample in a narrow-line magneto-optical trap (MOT) in a simple and efficient way. We implement a pair of angled slowing beams with respect to the Zeeman slower axis, and further slow down atoms exiting from the Zeeman slower. The second-stage slowing beams enable the narrow-line MOT to trap atoms exiting from the Zeeman slower with higher velocity. This scheme is particularly useful when the Zeeman slower is at low optical power without the conventional transverse cooling between an oven and a Zeeman slower, in which case we significantly improve the loading efficiency into the MOT and are able to trap more than $10^8$ atoms in the narrow-line MOT of $^{166}$Er. This work highlights our implementation, which greatly simplifies laser cooling and trapping of Er atoms and also should benefit other similar elements.
The production of molecules from dual species atomic quantum gases has enabled experiments that employ molecules at nanoKelvin temperatures. As a result, every degree of freedom of these molecules is in a well-defined quantum state and exquisitely controlled. These ultracold molecules open a new world of precision quantum chemistry in which quantum statistics, quantum partial waves, and even many-body correlations can play important roles. Moreover, to investigate the strongly correlated physics of many interacting molecular dipoles, we can mitigate lossy chemical reactions by controlling the dimensionality of the system using optical lattices formed by interfering laser fields. In a full three-dimensional optical lattice, chemistry can be turned on or off by tuning the lattice depth, which allows us to configure an array of long-range interacting quantum systems with rich internal structure. Such a system represents an excellent platform for gaining fundamental insights to complex materials based on quantum simulations and also for quantum information processing in the future.