Trapping of Neutral Rubidium with a Macroscopic Three-Phase Electric Trap

Abstract

We trap neutral ground-state rubidium atoms in a macroscopic trap based on purely electric fields. For this, three electrostatic field configurations are alternated in a periodic manner. The rubidium is precooled in a magneto-optical trap, transferred into a magnetic trap and then translated into the electric trap. The electric trap consists of six rod-shaped electrodes in cubic arrangement, giving ample optical access. Up to 10^5 atoms have been trapped with an initial temperature of around 20 microkelvin in the three-phase electric trap. The observations are in good agreement with detailed numerical simulations.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Molecules Near Absolute Zero and External Field Control of Atomic and Molecular Dynamics
• An AC electric trap for ground-state molecules
• Water vapor at a translational temperature of one kelvin
• Trapping of Rb atoms by ac electric fields
• Electrodynamic trapping of spinless neutral atoms with an atom chip

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