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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 21: Innovative Traps and Cooling Schemes (jointly with Q)

A 21.7: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 22. März 2007, 15:30–15:45, 5D

Electric trapping of Rb atoms — •Thomas Rieger, Pepijn Pinkse, and Gerhard Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching

Here we report on all-electric trapping of Rb atoms. Electric trapping of neutral atoms in time-varying electric fields was already proposed in the early nineties [1]. Recently, Katori and co-workers demonstrated first electric trapping in a micro trap [2]. We have shown two-dimensional trapping (guiding) of neutral molecules in time-varying electric fields [3] with a similar technique. The perspective of sympathetic cooling of molecules with atoms led us to set up an experiment for trapping neutral atoms in time-varying electric fields. In contrast to the one in Ref. [2], our electric trap is of millimeter size, allowing good optical access.

Based on simulations predicting a trap depth of 30  µ K, a magneto-optical trap has been setup. The laser-cooled atoms are magnetically trapped and transferred to the electric trap by mechanically moving the trap coils. After turning on the alternating electric fields, the atoms are electrically trapped for a few hundred milliseconds. The experimental results will be discussed in detail.

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

[2] H. Katori et al., AIP Conf. Proc. 770, 112 (2005)

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