2009/02/28 by P. A. Altin, N. P. Robins, R. Poldy +4
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Frequency and Time Standards #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Dipole #Feshbach resonance #Magnetic field #Physics #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum mechanics #Resonance (particle physics) #Ultracold atom #Zeeman effect #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.81.012713
published as Phys. Rev. A 81, 012713 (2010) · 4 pages, 3 figures, content changed
arxiv created 2009/07/23 · openalex publication_date 2010/01/29 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We report on measurements of inelastic loss processes in ultracold 85Rb |F=2\ensuremath⟩ atoms. Our apparatus creates ultracold 85Rb clouds by sympathetic cooling with a 87Rb reservoir in a quadrupole-Ioffe magnetic trap and subsequently in a weak, large-volume optical dipole trap. We demonstrate strong sympathetic cooling of 85Rb in the magnetic trap, increasing its phase-space density by three orders of magnitude with no detectable loss in number. Ultracold samples created in this way are used to observe the variation of inelastic loss in 85Rb |F=2, mF=\ensuremath-2\ensuremath⟩ clouds as a function of magnetic field near the 155-G Feshbach resonance and to measure the decay due to inelastic losses in all five Zeeman sublevels of the F=2 manifold, finding a particularly high three-body recombination rate in the lowest energy state. We have also observed and characterized a previously unobserved loss feature at 219.9(1) G with a width of 0.28(6) G, which we associate with a narrow Feshbach resonance predicted by theory.