Continuous loading of cold atoms into a Ioffe-Pritchard magnetic trap
- authored by
- Piet Oliver Schmidt, Sven Hensler, Jörg Werner, Thomas Binhammer, Axel Görlitz, Tilman Pfau
- Abstract
We present a robust continuous optical loading scheme for a Ioffe-Pritchard (IP) type magnetic trap (MT). Chromium atoms are cooled and trapped in a modified magneto-optical trap (MOT) consisting of a conventional 2D-MOT in the radial direction and an axial molasses. The MOT and IP trap share the same magnetic field configuration. Continuous loading of atoms into the IP trap is provided by radiative leakage from the MOT to a metastable level which is magnetically trapped and decoupled from the MOT light. We are able to accumulate 30 times more atoms in the MT than in the MOT. The absolute number of 2 × 108 atoms is limited by inelastic collisions. A model based on rate equations shows good agreement with the data. Our scheme can also be applied to other atoms with similar level structure like alkaline earth metals.
- External Organisation(s)
-
University of Stuttgart
- Type
- Article
- Journal
- Journal of Optics B: Quantum and Semiclassical Optics
- Volume
- 5
- Pages
- S170-S177
- ISSN
- 1464-4266
- Publication date
- 02.04.2003
- Publication status
- Published
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)
- Electronic version(s)
-
https://doi.org/10.1088/1464-4266/5/2/376 (Access:
Unknown)
