Eur. Phys. J. D 1, 255-258 (1998)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100530050090

Trapping cold neutral atoms with an iron-core electromagnet

¹ Institut d'Optique (URA 14 du CNRS) , BP 147, 91403 Orsay Cedex, France
² Institut für Quantenoptik, Universität Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany
³ L.E.Si.R (URA 1375 du CNRS) , ENS Cachan, France

Corresponding author: ^a bruno.desruelle@iota.u-psud.fr

Received: 4 August 1997
Revised: 28 November 1997
Accepted: 15 January 1998
Published online: 15 March 1998

Abstract

We have developed an iron-core electromagnet and used it to trap neutral atoms. The magnetic field can be switched from a spherical quadrupole configuration to a Ioffe configuration within 2 ms. We load 2 ⁸⁷Rb atoms from a vapor into a Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT) and transfer them into the purely magnetic trap with an efficiency of 95% . A strong radial compression is possible since we can generate quadrupole gradients up to 0.1 T/cm with an excitation current of 10 A (400 W of power consumption).