Eur. Phys. J. D 36, 95-100 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2005-00095-7

Collisions in a cesium hybrid optical and magnetic trap

¹ Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Bâtiment 505, Campus d'Orsay, 91405 Orsay, France
² Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, UMR 7162, CNRS/Université Denis Diderot-Paris 7, Case 7021, 2 place Jussieu, 75251 Paris Cedex 05, France

Corresponding author: ^a samuel.guibal@paris7.jussieu.fr

Received: 3 September 2004
Revised: 14 April 2005
Published online: 14 June 2005

Abstract

A new scheme for trapping Cs atoms in a non dissipative trap has been developed. The trap involves both optical dipole forces and magnetic forces. This device is suitable for Cs atoms in the lowest energy Zeeman sublevel, thus avoiding the two-body inelastic collisions which prevented reaching Bose-Einstein condensation of Cs in purely magnetic traps. Furthermore, an additional magnetic field can be applied, allowing a fine tuning of the two-body elastic collision cross-section. We report on the experimental realization of such a trap and describe the characteristics of the trapped atomic sample. An analysis of the collisional regime is performed using measurements of the damping of the oscillatory modes of the trapped atom cloud.