Achieving peak brightness in an atom laser

TL;DR

This paper reports the first continuous Raman atom laser with brightness three orders of magnitude higher than previous systems and demonstrates the potential for arbitrarily narrow energy linewidths, supported by experimental and theoretical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces the first continuous Raman atom laser with unprecedented brightness and narrow linewidth, validated by an analytic model matching experimental results.

Findings

Brightness is three orders of magnitude greater than previous atom lasers.

Energy linewidth can be made arbitrarily narrow.

Analytic model accurately predicts flux and brightness.

Abstract

In this paper we present experimental results and theory on the first continuous (long pulse) Raman atom laser. The brightness that can be achieved with this system is three orders of magnitude greater than has been previously demonstrated in any other continuously outcoupled atom laser. In addition, the energy linewidth of a continuous atom laser can be made arbitrarily narrow compared to the mean field energy of a trapped condensate. We analyze the flux and brightness of the atom laser with an analytic model that shows excellent agreement with experiment with no adjustable parameters.