Abstract

Laser cooling, where excess kinetic energy is extracted by a photon, is ideally suited to loading atoms into a trap; however, quantization and reabsorption of light, limit the maximum phase-space density attainable. A sequence of laser cooling followed by evaporative cooling, where the excess energy is extracted by escaping atoms, may be used to overcome the laser cooling limit,¹ however, such a scheme dramatically reduces the number of trapped atoms. A remaining challenge is to achieve continuous loading without the phase-space density limit imposed by near-resonant light. Here, we consider continuous “evaporative loading” of a magnetic trap² using a magnetically insensitive buffer gas.

© 1998 Optical Society of America