Trapping of Rb atoms by ac electric fields

Abstract

We demonstrate trapping of an ultracold gas of neutral atoms in a macroscopic ac electric trap. Three-dimensional confinement is obtained by switching between two saddle-point configurations of the electric field. Stable trapping is observed in a narrow range of switching frequencies around 60 Hz. The dynamic confinement of the atoms is directly visualized at different phases of the ac switching cycle. We observe about 10^5 Rb atoms in the 1 mm^3 large and several microkelvins deep trap with a lifetime of approximately 5 s.

4 pages, 4 figures; updated version, added journal reference

References in corpus (3)

• An AC electric trap for ground-state molecules
• Ultracold Rb-OH collisions and prospects for sympathetic cooling
• Electrodynamic trapping of spinless neutral atoms with an atom chip

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