Evaporative cooling from an optical dipole trap in microgravity

Abstract

In recent years, cold atoms could prove their scientific impact not only on ground but in microgravity environments such as the drop tower in Bremen, sounding rockets and parabolic flights. We investigate the preparation of cold atoms in an optical dipole trap, with an emphasis on evaporative cooling under microgravity. Up to $1\times 10^6$ rubidium-87 atoms were optically trapped from a temporarily dark magneto optical trap during free fall in the droptower in Bremen. The efficiency of evaporation is determined to be equal with and without the effect of gravity. This is confirmed using numerical simulations that prove the dimension of evaporation to be three-dimensional in both cases due to the anharmonicity of optical potentials. These findings pave the way towards various experiments on ultra-cold atoms under microgravity and support other existing experiments based on atom chips but with plans for additional optical dipole traps such as the upcoming follow-up missions to current and past spaceborne experiments.

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• Shell-shaped atomic gases
• All-Optical Matter-Wave Lens using Time-Averaged Potentials
• Rapid generation of all-optical ${}^{39}$K Bose-Einstein condensates using a low-field Feshbach resonance
• Micro-integrated crossed-beam optical dipole trap system with long-term alignment stability for mobile atomic quantum technologies
• Cold Atoms in Space: Community Workshop Summary and Proposed Road-Map
• Quantum Physics in Space