Eur. Phys. J. D 65, 11-18 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-10720-5

Regular Article

Bose-Einstein condensation of ⁸⁷Rb in a levitated crossed dipole trap

Department of Physics, Durham University, Rochester Building, Science Laboratories, South Road, DH1 3 LE Durham, UK

^a e-mail: d.l.jenkin@dur.ac.uk

Received: 22 December 2010
Received in final form: 21 February 2011
Published online: 27 April 2011

Abstract

We report an apparatus and method capable of producing Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of ~1 × 10^6 87Rb atoms, and ultimately designed for sympathetic cooling of ¹³³Cs and the creation of ultracold RbCs molecules. The method combines several elements: (i) the large recapture of a magnetic quadrupole trap from a magneto-optical trap; (ii) efficient forced RF evaporation in such a magnetic trap; (iii) the gain in phase-space density obtained when loading the magnetically trapped atoms into a far red-detuned optical dipole trap, and (iv) efficient evaporation to BEC within the dipole trap. We demonstrate that the system is capable of sympathetically cooling the |F = 1, m_F =  −1〉 and |1,0⟩ sublevels with |1, +1〉 atoms. Finally we discuss the applicability of the method to sympathetic cooling of ¹³³Cs with ⁸⁷Rb.