Frankfurt 2006 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 31: Poster Fallen und Kühlung

Q 31.13: Poster

Tuesday, March 14, 2006, 16:30–18:30, Labsaal

Towards electric trapping of neutral atoms — •T. Rieger, P. Windpassinger, T. Junglen, S.A. Rangwala, P.W.H. Pinkse und G. Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching.

The idea of electric trapping of neutral atoms in time-varying electric fields was already proposed in the early nineties [1]. Recently, we could show trapping of neutral molecules in electrostatic fields [2] and guiding in time-varying electric fields  [3] with a similar technique. The perspective of sympathetic cooling of molecules with atoms led us to design an experiment for trapping neutral atoms in time-varying electric fields.

Simulations predict a trap depth of 80 µ K, imposing pre-cooling in a magneto-optical trap. A vacuum apparatus was built housing the electrodes for the electric trap and providing optical access. A magneto-optical trap has been setup ≈ 2 cm besides the electric trap. The idea is to load the atoms in a magnetic trap and to transfer them over the distance of 2 cm by mechanically moving the trap coils with a piezo-electric translation stage. We report the status of the experiment.

[1] F. Shimizu and M. Morinaga, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 31, L1721 (1992);

[2] T. Rieger et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 95, 173002 (2005)

[3] T. Junglen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 92, 223001 (2004)