Losses of thulium atoms from optical dipole traps operating at 532 and 1064 nm

TL;DR

This study investigates atomic loss mechanisms in thulium optical dipole traps at 532 nm and 1064 nm, providing measurements of polarizability and comparing trap efficiencies for Bose-Einstein condensation.

Contribution

It offers the first analysis of loss mechanisms at 532 nm and measures scalar and tensor polarizability of thulium at 1064 nm, comparing different trap types.

Findings

Identified atomic loss mechanisms at 532 nm

Measured scalar polarizability at 1064 nm as 167±25 a.u.

Measured tensor polarizability at 1064 nm as -4±1 a.u.

Abstract

Recently thulium has been condensed to Bose-Einstein condensate. Machine learning was used to avoid a detailed study of all obstacles making cooling difficult. This paper analyses the atomic loss mechanism for the 532 nm optical trap, used in the Bose-condensation experiment, and compares it with the alternative and more traditional micron-range optical dipole trap. We also measured the scalar and tensor polarizability of thulium at 1064 nm and was found to be $167\pm 25$ a.u. ($275\pm 41\times {{10}^{-41}}\text{F }\cdot \text{ }{{\text{m}}^{\text{2}}}$) and $-4\pm 1$ a.u. ($7\pm 2\times {{10}^{-41}}\text{F }\cdot \text{ }{{\text{m}}^{\text{2}}}$).