Full text
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| Author(s): |
Sérgio Gustavo de Miranda
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Carlos. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Física de São Carlos (IFSC/BT) |
| Defense date: | 1999-03-17 |
| Examining board members: |
Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato;
Lidério Citrângulo Ioriatti Júnior;
Daniel Pereira
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| Advisor: | Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato |
| Abstract | |
The goal was to learn and to develop efficient techniques to be used for quickly loading magneto optical traps. It may become usefull during the first steps towards producing Bose-Einstein condensates. A few different aproaches were attempted in order to avoid the loading from the surrounding thermal vapor. The key factor was the use of an opaque, disc shapped, laser beam block. It was imprinted onto one facet of an optical glass slab and then imaged into the trapping region producing a dark shadow there. This blackned region was found to eliminate the harmful effects of the near resonant light from the decelerating laser beam, which is able to pump a significant fraction of the captured atoms out of the trap. Therefore, we were able to signicantly improve the overall trapping efficiency and the number of atoms captured from the decelerated atomic beam. In the optimal configuration, we counted 7x108 trapped atoms with number densities as high as 1010 atoms/cm3 (AU) | |