Trapping of Neutral Rubidium with a Macroscopic Three-Phase Electric Trap

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates trapping of neutral rubidium atoms using a macroscopic electric trap with alternating electrostatic configurations, achieving significant atom numbers and low temperatures, supported by numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel three-phase electric trapping method for neutral atoms, combining multiple field configurations for effective trapping.

Findings

Trapped up to 10^5 rubidium atoms.

Achieved initial temperatures around 20 microkelvin.

Observations agree with numerical simulations.

Abstract

We trap neutral ground-state rubidium atoms in a macroscopic trap based on purely electric fields. For this, three electrostatic field configurations are alternated in a periodic manner. The rubidium is precooled in a magneto-optical trap, transferred into a magnetic trap and then translated into the electric trap. The electric trap consists of six rod-shaped electrodes in cubic arrangement, giving ample optical access. Up to 10^5 atoms have been trapped with an initial temperature of around 20 microkelvin in the three-phase electric trap. The observations are in good agreement with detailed numerical simulations.