How to reach the collisional regime on a magnetically guided atomic beam
arXiv:cond-mat/0404560
Abstract
In this paper, we report our progress towards the realization of a continuous guided atomic beam in the degenerate regime. So far, we have coupled into a magnetic guide a flux of a few atoms/s at 60 cm/s with a propagation in the guide over more than 2 meters. At this stage, the collision rate is not high enough to start an efficient forced evaporative cooling. Here we describe a new approach to reach the collisional regime. It is based on a pulsed feeding of the magnetic guide at a high repetition rate. The overlap of the packets of atoms occurs in the guide and leads to a continuous guided beam. We discuss different ways to increase the collision rate of this beam while keeping the phase space density constant by shaping the external potential.