No Arabic abstract
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 present our technique to create a magneto-optical trap for dysprosium atoms using the narrow-line cooling transition at 626$,$nm to achieve suitable conditions for direct loading into an optical dipole trap. The magneto-optical trap is loaded from an atomic beam via a Zeeman slower using the strongest atomic transition at 421$,$nm. With this combination of two cooling transitions we can trap up to $2.0cdot10^8$ atoms at temperatures down to 6$, mu$K. This cooling approach is simpler than present work with ultracold dysprosium and provides similar starting conditions for a transfer to an optical dipole trap.
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.
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 on the first realization of a two-species magneto-optical trap (MOT) for erbium and dysprosium. The MOT operates on an intercombination line for the respective species. Owing to the narrow-line character of such a cooling transition and the action of gravity, we demonstrate a novel trap geometry employing only five beams in orthogonal configuration. We observe that the mixture is cooled and trapped very efficiently, with up to um{5e8} Er atoms and um{e9} Dy atoms at temperatures of about $10,mu K$. Our results offer an ideal starting condition for the creation of a dipolar quantum mixture of highly magnetic atoms.
Rapidly scanning magnetic and optical dipole traps have been widely utilised to form time-averaged potentials for ultracold quantum gas experiments. Here we theoretically and experimentally characterise the dynamic properties of Bose-Einstein condensates in ring-shaped potentials that are formed by scanning an optical dipole beam in a circular trajectory. We find that unidirectional scanning leads to a non-trivial phase profile of the condensate that can be approximated analytically using the concept of phase imprinting. While the phase profile is not accessible through in-trap imaging, time-of-flight expansion manifests clear density signatures of an in-trap phase step in the condensate, coincident with the instantaneous position of the scanning beam. The phase step remains significant even when scanning the beam at frequencies two orders of magnitude larger than the characteristic frequency of the trap. We map out the phase and density properties of the condensate in the scanning trap, both experimentally and using numerical simulations, and find excellent agreement. Furthermore, we demonstrate that bidirectional scanning eliminated the phase gradient, rendering the system more suitable for coherent matter wave interferometry.