Evaporation of an atomic beam on a material surface

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method for evaporative cooling of an atomic beam using a ceramic surface and magnetic fields, achieving a significant increase in phase space density with high efficiency.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel, flexible technique for evaporative cooling of atomic beams via surface adsorption, showing high efficiency and local control.

Findings

Phase space density increased by a factor of 1.5

Evaporation efficiency close to 100%

Method suitable for cooling atomic beams

Abstract

We report on the implementation of evaporative cooling of a magnetically guided beam by adsorption on a ceramic surface. We use a transverse magnetic field to shift locally the beam towards the surface, where atoms are selectively evaporated. With a 5~mm long ceramic piece, we gain a factor $1.5\pm0.2$ on the phase space density. Our results are consistent with a 100% efficiency of this evaporation process. The flexible implementation that we have demonstrated, combined with the very local action of the evaporation zone, makes this method particularly suited for the evaporative cooling of a beam.