Behavior of a very large magneto-optical trap

Abstract

We investigate the scaling behavior of a very large magneto-optical trap (VLMOT) containing up to $1.4\times 10^{11}$ Rb${}^{87}$ atoms. By varying the diameter of the trapping beams, we are able to change the number of trapped atoms by more than 5 orders of magnitude. We then study the scaling laws of the loading and size of the VLMOT, and analyze the shape of the density profile in this regime where the Coulomb-like, light-mediated repulsive interaction between atoms is expected to play an important role.

9 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Observation of a Cooperative Radiation Force in the Presence of Disorder
• Photon bubbles in ultra-cold matter
• Self-driven nonlinear dynamics in magneto-optical traps

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Phase-space properties of magneto-optical traps utilising micro-fabricated gratings
• Kibble-Zurek mechanism in the self-organization of a cold atomic cloud
• Collective effects in the radiation pressure force