A proposal for continuous loading of an optical dipole trap with magnetically guided ultra cold atoms

Abstract

The capture of a moving atom by a non-dissipative trap, such as an optical dipole trap, requires the removal of the excessive kinetic energy of the atom. In this article we develop a mechanism to harvest ultra cold atoms from a guided atom beam into an optical dipole trap by removing their directed kinetic energy. We propose a continuous loading scheme where this is accomplished via deceleration by a magnetic potential barrier followed by optical pumping to the energetically lowest Zeeman sublevel. We theoretically investigate the application of this scheme to the transfer of ultra cold chromium atoms from a magnetically guided atom beam into a deep optical dipole trap. We discuss the realization of a suitable magnetic field configuration. Based on numerical simulations of the loading process we analyze the feasibility and efficiency of our loading scheme.

10 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Bose-Einstein condensation of chromium
• A pumped atom laser
• Compression of Atomic Phase Space Using an Asymmetric One-Way Barrier

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Continuous all-optical deceleration and single-photon cooling of molecular beams
• A slow gravity compensated Atom Laser
• Application of lasers to ultracold atoms and molecules
• Laser cooling of a magnetically guided ultra cold atom beam
• Sisyphus cooling in a continuously loaded trap
• Cold atom dynamics in crossed laser beam waveguides
• Evaporation limited loading of an atom trap
• Continuous atom laser with Bose-Einstein condensates involving three-body interactions
• Continuous loading of an atom beam into an optical lattice