Experiment
The experimental cycle basically consists of the following steps:
- A two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D MOT) loads a 3D MOT.
- After a dark MOT and optical molasses phase, we load the cold atom cloud into a crossed FORT (Far Off-Resonance dipole Trap).
- By compressing the FORT and simultaneous evaporative cooling, we reach quantum degeneracy (Kinoshita et al., Phys. Rev. A 71, 011602(R) (2005)) .
- The atoms will then be dropped for use in the atom-interferometric sequence.
Our realization is all-optical due to the following advantages:
- fast production of quantum degenerate gases (2-3 s)
- trapping of all mF-substates (especially mF=0)
- no magnetic fields disturbing the atom-interferometric measurement
- compact construction
Fig. 2: Assembled vacuum system used for ATLAS: CAD drawing (left) and current setup (right). The red arrow marks the atom cloud in the running 3D MOT.
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