Magnetic merging of ultracold atomic gases of ${}^{85}$Rb and ${}^{87}$Rb

Abstract

We report on the magnetic merging of ultracold atomic gases of ${}^{85}$Rb and ${}^{87}$Rb by the controlled overlap of two initially spatially-separated magnetic traps. We present a detailed analysis of the combined magnetic field potential as the two traps are brought together which predicts a clear optimum trajectory for the merging. We verify this prediction experimentally using ${}^{85}$Rb and find that the final atom number in the merged trap is maximised with minimal heating by following the predicted optimum trajectory. Using the magnetic merging approach allows us to create variable ratio isotopic Rb mixtures with a single laser cooling setup by simply storing one isotope in a magnetic trap before jumping the laser frequencies to the transitions necessary to laser cool the second isotope. This offers a simple and cost effective way to achieve suitable starting conditions for sympathetic cooling of ${}^{85}$Rb by ${}^{87}$Rb towards quantum degeneracy.

18 pages, 7 figures; http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.83.053633

References in corpus (18)

• Theory of ultracold Fermi gases
• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• The physics of dipolar bosonic quantum gases
• Cold and Ultracold Molecules: Science, Technology, and Applications
• Formation of bright matter-wave solitons during the collapse of Bose-Einstein condensates
• Double species condensate with tunable interspecies interactions
• Quantum Gas of Deeply Bound Ground State Molecules
• Ultracold Molecules in the Ro-Vibrational Triplet Ground State
• Localization of bosonic atoms by fermionic impurities in a 3d optical lattice
• Optical pumping and vibrational cooling of molecules
• Quantum degenerate two-species Fermi-Fermi mixture coexisting with a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Modulation transfer spectroscopy in atomic rubidium
• Observation of Heteronuclear Feshbach Molecules from a ${}^{85}$Rb - ${}^{87}$Rb gas
• Control of the interaction in a Fermi-Bose mixture
• Double-degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture of strontium
• Rb-85 tunable-interaction Bose-Einstein condensate machine
• Magnetic trapping of a cold Rb-Cs atomic mixture
• Mixing of ultracold atomic clouds by merging of two magnetic traps

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Fluctuation driven topological transition of binary condensates in optical lattices
• Segregated quantum phases of dipolar bosonic mixtures in two-dimensional optical lattices
• Guided transport of ultracold gases of rubidium up to a room-temperature dielectric surface
• Long distance optical conveyor-belt transport of ultracold ${}^{133}$Cs and ${}^{87}$Rb atoms
• Miscibility-Immiscibility transition of strongly interacting bosonic mixtures in optical lattices