Efficient all-optical production of large Li-6 quantum gases using D-1 gray-molasses cooling
Year: 2014
Authors: Burchianti A., Valtolina G., Seman J. A., Pace E., De Pas M., Inguscio M., Zaccanti M., Roati G.
Autors Affiliation: Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, via Nello Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy;
LENS and Università di Firenze, via Nello Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy;
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa, Italy;
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology–Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms,Cambridge, MA 02139 USA;
INRIM, Strada delle Cacce 91, 10135 Torino, Italy
Abstract: We use a gray molasses operating on the D-1 atomic transition to produce degenerate quantum gases of Li-6 with a large number of atoms. This sub-Doppler cooling phase allows us to lower the initial temperature of 10(9) atoms from 500 to 40 mu K in 2 ms. We observe that D-1 cooling remains effective into a high-intensity infrared dipole trap where two-state mixtures are evaporated to reach the degenerate regime. We produce molecular Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 5 x 10(5) molecules and weakly interacting degenerate Fermi gases of 7 x 10(5) atoms at T/T-F < 0.1 with a typical experimental duty cycle of 11 s. Journal/Review: PHYSICAL REVIEW A
Volume: 90 (4) Pages from: 043408 to: 043408
More Information: We thank A. Morales and A. Trenkwalder, for useful discussions and contributions to the experiment, and R. Ballerini and A. Hajeb and the members of the LENS electronic workshop for technical support during the building stage of the experiment. Special acknowledgment is made to the LENS Quantum Gases group. We also are grateful to F. Chevy for useful insights on D