Bonn 2025 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 25: Poster – Cold Atoms and Molecules, Matter Waves (joint session Q/A/MO)

Q 25.63: Poster

Tuesday, March 11, 2025, 14:00–16:00, Tent

ORKA - Towards a Cavity Enhanced All Optical Rb87 BEC Source for Atom Interferometry in Microgravity — •Jan Eric Stiehler, Marius Prinz, Marian Woltmann, and Sven Herrmann — Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), University of Bremen, Germany

Evaporative cooling in optical traps is a common method to prepare ultra-cold atoms and generate Bose-Einstein-condensates (BEC). This usually comes at the price of an increased power budget for the trapping lasers. For setups that require energy efficiency, e.g. in space, magnetic chip traps are thus often preferred. However, these also come with their own limitations and lack some of the benefits of all-optical trapping and cooling. As an alternative, we are investigating the use of a resonantly enhanced 1064nm optical dipole trap for Rb87 to mitigate the power needs for all optical evaporative cooling. We are working on employing a bow-tie cavity for evaporative cooling down to a BEC to then be used as a matterwave source for interferometry in free-fall experiments at the Gravitower Bremen facility. Here we present our design and current progress of the experiment as well as first tests of the resonator. The ORKA project is supported by the German Space Agency DLR with funds provided by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action under grant number DLR 50 WM 2267.

Keywords: microgravity; cavity; all aoptical; BEC; matter wave