Evaporative Cooling of Atoms to Quantum Degeneracy in an Optical Dipole Trap

Abstract

We discuss our experimental results on forced evaporative cooling of cold rubidium 87Rb atoms to quantum degeneracy in an Optical Dipole Trap. The atoms are first trapped and cooled in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) loaded from a continuous beam of cold atoms [1]. More than 1010 atoms are trapped in the MOT and then about 108 atoms are transferred to a Quasi-Electrostatic Trap (QUEST) formed by tightly focused CO2 laser (λ = 10.6μm) beams intersecting at their foci in an orthogonal configuration in the horizontal plane. Before loading the atoms into the dipole trap, the phase-space density of the atomic ensemble was increased making use of sub-doppler cooling at large detuning and the temporal dark MOT technique. In a MOT the phase-space density of the atomic ensemble is six orders of magnitude less than what is required to achieve quantum degeneracy. After transferring atoms into the dipole trap efficiently, phase-space density increases by a factor of 103. Further increase in phase-space density to quantum degeneracy is achieved by forced evaporative cooling of atoms in the dipole trap.The evaporative cooling process involves a gradual reduction of the trap depth by ramping down the trapping laser intensity over a second. The temperature of the cold atomic cloud was measured by time-of-flight (TOF) technique. The spatial distribution of the atoms is measured using absorption imaging. We report results of evaporative cooling in a single beam and in a crossed double-beam dipole traps. Due to the large initial phase space density, and large initial number of atoms trapped, the quantum phase transition occurs after about 600 ms of evaporative cooling in our optimized crossed dipole trap.