Professor Christopher Foot

Abstract:

We report the experimental realization of a versatile ring trap for ultracold atoms. The ring geometry is created by the time-averaged adiabatic potential resulting from the application of an oscillating magnetic bias field to a rf-dressed quadrupole trap. Lifetimes for a Bose-Einstein condensate in the ring exceed 11s and the ring radius was continuously varied from 50μm to 262μm. An efficient method of loading the ring from a conventional time-averaged orbiting potential trap is presented together with a rotation scheme which introduces angular momentum into the system. The ring presents an opportunity to study the superfluid properties of a condensate in a multiply connected geometry and also has applications for matter-wave interferometry. © 2011 American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We report an experimental realization of ultracold atoms confined in a time-averaged, adiabatic potential (TAAP). This trapping technique involves using a slowly oscillating (∼kHz) bias field to time-average the instantaneous potential given by dressing a bare magnetic potential with a high-frequency (~MHz) magnetic field. The resultant potentials provide a convenient route to a variety of trapping geometries with tunable parameters. We demonstrate the TAAP trap in a standard time-averaged orbiting potential trap with additional Helmholtz coils for the introduction of the radio frequency dressing field. We have evaporatively cooled 5×104 atoms of Rb87 to quantum degeneracy and observed condensate lifetimes of longer than 3 s. © 2010 The American Physical Society.