quadrupole-Ioffe-configuration Research Articles

Rapid generation of metastable helium Bose-Einstein condensates

We report the realisation of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of metastable helium atoms using an in-vacuum coil magnetic trap and a crossed beam optical dipole trap. A novel quadrupole-Ioffe configuration (QUIC) magnetic trap made from in-vacuum hollow copper tubes provides fast switching times while generating traps with a 10G bias, without compromising optical access. The bias enables in-trap 1D doppler cooling to be used, which is the only cooling stage between the magneto-optic trap (MOT) and the optical dipole trap. This allows direct transfer to the dipole trap without the need for any additional evaporative cooling in the magnetic trap. The entire experimental sequence takes 3.3 seconds, with essentially pure BECs observed with $\sim 10^6$ atoms after evaporative cooling in the dipole trap.

A Quasi-1D Potential for Bose Gas Phase Fluctuations**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 61703025, 91736028 and 61673041.

An elongated trap potential for cold atoms is designed based on a quadrupole-Ioffe configuration. Phase fluctuations in a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC), which is confined by the trap, are studied. We simulate the atom density distribution induced by fluctuation after time of flight from this elongated trap potential and study the temperature measurement method related to the distribution. Furthermore, taking advantage of the tight confinement and radio frequency dressing technique, we propose a double well potential for splitting BECs. Our results are helpful for improving understanding of low-dimensional quantum gases and provide important guidance for atomic interferometry.

Realisation and Characterisation the BEC for 87Rb Atoms

The Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is created in a magnetic trap in the Quadrupole-Ioffe configuration (QUIC). This kind of trap combines an anti-Helmholtz quadrupole field with an offset field produced by a single coil perpendicular to the quadrupole field axis to suppress Majorana transitions. In the quadrupole trap evaporative cooling is performed by using radio frequency, reaching the phase transition to a BEC in the QUIC trap. By using Time of Flight (TOF) technique, the expansion velocity is measured with and which lead to temperature of and It is roughly around the recoil temperature.

Dependence of in-situ Bose condensate size on final frequency of RF-field in evaporative cooling

We report the results of in-situ characterization of 87Rb atom cloud in a quadrupole Ioffe configuration (QUIC) magnetic trap after a radio-frequency (RF) evaporative cooling of the trapped atom cloud. The in-situ absorption images of the atom cloud have shown clear bimodal optical density (OD) profiles which indicate the Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) phase transition in the trapped gas. Also, we report here, for the first time, the measured variation in the sizes of the condensate and thermal clouds with the final frequency selected in the frequency scan of the RF-field for evaporative cooling. These results on frequency-dependent sizes of the clouds are consistent with the theoretical understanding of the BEC phenomenon in the trap.

Observation of critical behavior of ultra-cold Bose gas in a magnetic trap

Quantum criticality emerges when the collective fluctuations of matter undergo a continuous phase transition at zero temperature and has been a research focus in conventional condensed-matter physics over the past several decades. In the quantum critical regime, the exotic and universal properties are expected. These properties are independent of the microscopic details of the system, but depend only on a few general properties of the system, such as its dimensionality and the symmetry of the order parameter. The research of quantum criticality can not only help us to understand quantum phase transitions, but also provide a novel route to new material design and discovery.Ultracold bosonic gases have provided a clean system for studying the quantum critical phenomena. The critical behavior of a weakly interacting three-dimensional (3D) Bose gas should be identical to that of 4He at the superfluid transition, which belongs to the 3D XY universality class. From the normal fluid to the superfluid, the system undergoes a phase transition from completely disorder to long-range order, while in the vicinity of the phase transition point, the system parameters will show some singularity characteristics. In this paper, we observe the critical behavior of 87Rb Bose gas in a quadrupole-Ioffe configuration (QUIC) trap near the phase transition temperature Tc. A novel singularity behavior of the full width at half maximum of momentum distribution (FWHMMD) of atomic gas is discovered in the experiment. Prior to our experiment, we prepare a sample with 7.8105 87Rb atoms in the 5S1/2 |F=2, mF=2 state. Then the sample is held in a QUIC trap for a presetting period of time to control the temperature of atom sample precisely. During the holding time, the sample is heated up due to background gas collisions or fluctuations of the trap potential. In our experiment, the heating rate is deduced to be 0.3480.078 nK/ms from the absorption image. For a bosonic gas in a harmonic trap, critical gas can only cover a finite-size region due to a spatially varying density. We define the finite-size region as a critical region determined by the Ginzburg criterion. Then the FWHMMDs of atomic gas in the critical region are measured for different temperatures near the critical point. To this aim, we first extract the momentum distribution of atomic gas from the absorption image of the atomic clouds released from the QIUC trap after free expansion. Thus momentum distribution of atomic gas in the critical region can be extracted from the absorption image by subtracting the momentum distribution of thermal gas outside the critical region. According to the statistical results of the FWHMMD at different temperatures, we find that the FWHMMD suddenly reduces, thus revealing a very notable singularity behavior when the temperature is very close to the phase transition temperature Tc.

Production of 87Rb Bose—Einstein condensates in a hybrid trap

We report a rapid evaporative cooling method using a hybrid trap which is composed of a quadrupole magnetic trap and a one-beam optical dipole trap. It contains two kinds of evaporative coolings to reach the quantum degeneracy: initial radio-frequency (RF) enforced evaporative cooling in the quadrupole magnetic trap and further runaway evaporative cooling in the optical dipole trap. The hybrid trap does not require a very high power laser such as that in the traditional pure optical trap, but still has a deep trap depth and a large trap volume, and has better optical access than the normal magnetic trap like the quadrupole-Ioffe-configuration (QUIC) cloverleaf trap. A high trap frequency can be easily realized in the hybrid trap to enhance the elastic collision rate and shorten the evaporative cooling time. In our experiment, pure Bose—Einstein condensates (BECs) with about 1 × 105 atoms can be realized in 6 s evaporative cooling in the optical dipole trap.

High-performance experimental apparatus for large atom number 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensates

We describe our high-performance experimental apparatus for producing large atom number 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensates by using a double magneto-optical trap (MOT) system that consists of a two-dimensional MOT (2D MOT) and a three-dimensional MOT (3D MOT). As an atomic beam source for loading the 3D MOT, we use a unique 2D MOT system with two-color pushing beams, which increase the loading rate and the total number of atoms in the 3D MOT, compared to a pure 2D MOT by a factor of 20. After MOT compression and polarization gradient cooling, atoms are optically pumped into a magnetically trappable hyperfine state |F = 1, mF = −1〉 to be loaded into a quadrupole-Ioffe-configuration (QUIC) trap. We enhance this optical pumping process by up to 300% by using two laser beams. After rf evaporative cooling, a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with more than 2 × 107 atoms is achieved.

Vortex nucleation in Bose–Einstein condensates confined in a QUIC trap by topological phase imprinting

We studied the nucleation of quadruple-quantized vortices in Bose–Einstein condensates confined in a quadrupole-Ioffe-configuration (QUIC) magnetic trap by means of the topological phase imprinting method, wherein the initially aligned atomic spins were adiabatically reversed by applying an external bias magnetic field. We calculated the change in the magnetic field distributions of the trap when a homogeneous or a gradient bias field was applied for reversing the spins, and almost the same results were obtained for both cases. We applied the gradient bias field using a single coil because of its simplicity and stability. Vortices were successfully created at the reversal time of atomic spins between 2 and 16 ms. Moreover, the vortices were observed at a holding time of up to 9 ms in the magnetic trap after a constant reversal time of 5 ms.

Efficient production of largeK39Bose-Einstein condensates

We describe an experimental setup and the cooling procedure for producing 39K Bose-Einstein condensates of over 4x10^5 atoms. Condensation is achieved via a combination of sympathetic cooling with 87Rb in a quadrupole-Ioffe-configuration (QUIC) magnetic trap, and direct evaporation in a large volume crossed optical dipole trap, where we exploit the broad Feshbach resonance at 402 G to tune the 39K interactions from weak and attractive to strong and repulsive. In the same apparatus we create quasi-pure 87Rb condensates of over 8x10^5 atoms.

Increased efficiency of rf-induced evaporative cooling by utilizing gravity

We report on an efficient rf-induced forced evaporative cooling of an ensemble of {sup 87}Rb atoms in state |F=2,m{sub F}=2> magnetically trapped in a quadrupole-Ioffe configuration trap. The cigar-shaped trap is oriented with its weak confining axis along the direction of gravity leading to, first, a significant separation of the trapping positions for low-field-seeking atoms with different m{sub F} value and, second, a reduced resonance volume for rf-induced evaporation confined to a small region around the lower tip of the cigar-shaped ensemble. This results in an enhancement of the evaporation efficiency {alpha}{identical_to}dlnT/(dlnN) due to either reduced or completely vanishing scattering events between cooled and evaporated atoms. We present data illustrating this effect.

Transport of Bose-Einstein condensate in QUIC trap and separation of trapping spin states

We have studied the locomotion track of (87)Rb Bose-Einstein condensate during decompressing the trap into the center of the glass cell in a quadrupole-Ioffe configuration trap. In order to change the position of the BEC, the current in the quadrupole coils is reduced while the current in the Ioffe coil keeps constant. Because of the strongly reduced trap frequencies of the moved trap, the BEC considerably sags down due to the gravity. Thus an inflexion point exists in the process of moving BEC. When rubidium atoms go over the inflexion point, they cannot keep in balance under the gravity and the force provided by a magnetic field, and flow downward and towards Ioffe coil. By utilizing this effect, the trapped atoms with the spin state |F = 2,mF = 1>, which are left over in the BEC, can be separated from the BEC of |F = 2,mF = 2> state.

Evaporative cooling of 87Rb atoms into Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical dipole trap

We create a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of 87Rb atoms by runaway evaporative cooling in an optical trap. Two crossed infrared laser beams with a wavelength of 1064 nm are used to form an optical dipole trap. After precooling the atom samples in a quadrupole-Ioffe configuration (QUIC) trap under 1.5 \mu K by radio-frequency (RF) evaporative cooling, the samples are transferred into the center of the glass cell, then loaded into the optical dipole trap with 800 ms. The pure condensate with up to 1.5×10 5 atoms is obtained over 1.17 s by lowering the power of the trap beams.

Quantum Degenerate Fermi–Bose Mixtures of 40K and 87Rb Atoms in a Quadrupole-Ioffe Configuration Trap

We report on the attainment of quantum degeneracy of 40K by means of efficient thermal collisions with the evaporatively cooled 87Rb atoms. In a quadrupole-Ioffe configuration trap, potassium atoms are cooled to 0.5 times the Fermi temperature. We obtain up to 7.59 × 105 degenerate fermions 40K.

Optimization of the Loading Process of the QUIC Magnetic Trapfor the Experiment of Bose–Einstein Condensation

The magnetic quadrupole-Ioffe configuration (QUIC) trap in ourBose–Einstein condensation experiment is introduced. The magnetic traploading process after laser cooling is analysed and the optimization ofthe loading process is studied experimentally. Calculation of themagnetic field explains the loss of the atoms during the loading processof the QUIC trap. The number of atoms loaded in the QUIC trap isincreased by 40% after optimization in comparison with thenormal loading process.