Direct evaporative cooling of 39K atoms to Bose-Einstein condensation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a simplified method to produce Bose-Einstein condensates of 39K atoms using direct evaporative cooling, avoiding the need for sympathetic cooling with other atoms, and achieving large condensates rapidly.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach combining sub-Doppler laser cooling and magnetic Feshbach resonances for efficient BEC production of 39K without auxiliary coolants.

Findings

Large condensates (>10^6 atoms) produced in under 15 seconds

Eliminates need for sympathetic cooling with Rb atoms

Simplifies experimental setup for 39K BECs

Abstract

We report the realization of Bose-Einstein condensates of 39K atoms without the aid of an additional atomic coolant. Our route to Bose-Einstein condensation comprises Sub Doppler laser cooling of large atomic clouds with more than 10^10 atoms and evaporative cooling in optical dipole traps where the collisional cross section can be increased using magnetic Feshbach resonances. Large condensates with almost 10^6 atoms can be produced in less than 15 seconds. Our achievements eliminate the need for sympathetic cooling with Rb atoms which was the usual route implemented till date due to the unfavourable collisional property of 39K. Our findings simplify the experimental set-up for producing Bose-Einstein condensates of 39K atoms with tunable interactions, which have a wide variety of promising applications including atom-interferometry to studies on the interplay of disorder and interactions in quantum gases.