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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 48: Ultracold atoms: Traps and cooling
Q 48.2: Talk
Thursday, March 21, 2013, 11:15–11:30, A 310
Building and Characterising a 2D-MOT as a Source of Cold Atoms — •Benjamin Gänger, Michael Bauer, Farina Kindermann, Shrabana Chakrabarti, and Artur Widera — TU Kaiserslautern, FB Physik, Erwin-Schrödinger-Str. 46, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Analysing the interaction of a single Cs atom with a cloud of ultracold Rb atoms requires many repetitions of the experimental cycle to obtain sufficient statistics. Therefore a high repetition rate is desirable which is limited by the time needed to initially trap and evaporatively cool a gas of atoms. As a first step towards a fast production of an ultracold cloud of atoms a 3D magneto-optical trap (MOT) is loaded by a beam of precooled Rb atoms from a 2D-MOT. For short loading cycles a high loading rate is intended. The designed cooling-laser setup provides up to 5 W optical output distributed over a 3D-MOT and a 2D-MOT with a 110 mm elongated cooling volume. Applying an additional push beam the loading rate reaches up to 109 atoms/s. In this setup a steady-state atom number of 2×109 atoms is achieved in about 2 seconds. We present an overview of the current setup and first results of the characterisation.