Continuous loading of cold atoms into a Ioffe-Pritchard magnetic trap

We report on building a pulsed source of cold Tm atoms and loading of the narrow-line magnito-optical trap (MOT) from the cold atomic beam. We achieve the loading rate of the first-stage MOT in the primary chamber up to $10^8$ atoms/s and obtain a cold atomic beam with the mean longitudinal velocity $\sim10$ m/s and angular spread of 18 mrad in a pulsed mode. We also introduce a novel method to enhance the capture velocity of the narrow-line MOT by incorporating additional ax...

One important factor which determines efficiency of loading cold atoms into an optical dipole trap from a magneto-optical trap is the distance between the trap centers. By studying this efficiency for various optical trap depths (2--110 mK) we find that for optimum dipole trap loading, longitudinal displacements up to 15 mm are necessary. An explanation for this observation is presented and compared with other work and a simple analytical formula is derived for the optimum di...

We report on an experimental realization of a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D-MOT) that allows the generation of cold atomic beams of 39K and 41K bosonic potassium isotopes. The high measured fluxes up to 1.0x10^11 atoms/s and low atomic velocities around 33 m/s are well suited for a fast and reliable 3D-MOT loading, a basilar feature for new generation experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation of dilute atomic samples. We also present a simple multilevel theoretical...

We demonstrate transport and evaporative cooling of several atomic clouds in a chain of magnetic Ioffe-Pritchard traps moving at a low speed ($<1$~m/s). The trapping scheme relies on the use of a magnetic guide for transverse confinement and of magnets fixed on a conveyor belt for longitudinal trapping. This experiment introduces a new approach for parallelizing the production of Bose-Einstein condensates as well as for the realization of a continuous atom laser.

We report a compact (<20cm3), robust source for producing a bright flux of cold atoms, which can be loaded efficiently into a magnetic guide. A continuous flux of up to 8 x 109 87Rb atoms/s have been produced from this 2D+ vapor cell MOT. The flux had a divergence of 12.5 mrad and velocity could be controlled in the range 2-15 m/s. This flux was coupled continuously into a magnetic guide with high efficiency.

We present a cold atomic beam source based on a two-dimensional (2D)+ magneto-optical trap (MOT), capable of generating a continuous cold beam of 87Rb atoms with a flux up to 4.3*10^9 atoms/s, a mean velocity of 10.96(2.20) m/s, and a transverse temperature of 16.90(1.56) uK. Investigating the influence of high cooling laser intensity, we observe a significant population loss of atoms to hyperfine-level dark states. To account for this, we employ a multiple hyperfine level mo...

We have demonstrated and modeled a simple and efficient method to transfer atoms from a first Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT) to a second one. Two independent setups, with cesium and rubidium atoms respectively, have shown that a high power and slightly diverging laser beam optimizes the transfer between the two traps when its frequency is red-detuned from the atomic transition. This pushing laser extracts a continuous beam of slow and cold atoms out of the first MOT and also prov...

We describe a dynamic magneto-optical trap (MOT) suitable for the use with vacuum systems in which optical access is limited to a single window. This technique facilitates the long-standing desire of producing integrated atom chips, many of which are likely to have severely restricted optical access compared with conventional vacuum chambers. This "switching-MOT" relies on the synchronized pulsing of optical and magnetic fields at audio frequencies. The trap's beam geometry i...

We present a dual-species oven and Zeeman slower setup capable of producing slow, high-flux atomic beams for loading magneto-optical traps. Our compact and versatile system is based on electronic switching between different magnetic field profiles and is applicable to a wide range of multi-species experiments. We give details of the vacuum setup, coils and simple electronic circuitry. In addition, we demonstrate the performance of our system by optimized, sequential loading o...

We present a realization of a magneto-optical trap of mercury atoms on the intercombination line. We report on trapping of all stable mercury isotopes. We characterize the effect of laser detuning, laser intensity, and gradient field on the trapping performance of our system. The atom number for the most abundant isotope Hg-202 is 50 million atoms. Moreover, we study the difference in cooling processes for bosonic and fermionic isotopes. We observe agreement with the Doppler ...