arXiv subjects

K. M. R. van der Stam

Publications and source records attributed to K. M. R. van der Stam.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2009

Excitations of Bose-Einstein condensates in a one-dimensional periodic potential

We report on the experimental investigation of the response of a three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in the presence of a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice. By means of Bragg spectroscopy we probe the band structure of the excitation spectrum in the presence of the periodic potential. We selectively induce elementary excitations of the BEC choosing the transferred momentum and we observe different resonances in the energy transfer, corresponding to the transitions to different bands. The frequency, the width and the strength of these resonances are investigated as a function of the amplitude of the 1D optical lattice.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2008

Noise correlation spectroscopy of the broken order of a Mott insulating phase

We use a two-color lattice to break the homogeneous site occupation of an atomic Mott Insulator of bosonic 87Rb. We detect the disruption of the ordered Mott domains via noise correlation analysis of the atomic density distribution after time-of-flight. The appearance of additional correlation peaks evidences the redistribution of the atoms into a strongly inhomogeneous insulating state, in quantitative agreement with the predictions.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2007

Resonant superradiant backward-scattering as a source for many-particle entanglement

We investigate the atom pair production by superradiant backward-scattering from a Bose-Einstein condensate. By driving the superradiant process with two frequencies we can extend both the range of pulse duration and intensity by two orders of magnitude and obtain full control over the number of scattered atoms in forward and backward direction. We show that the atoms scattered in forward direction are strongly correlated with the atoms scattered in backward direction, which makes resonant superradiant backward-scattering a promising candidate for many-particle entanglement.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2006

Reaching the hydrodynamic regime in a Bose-Einstein condensate by suppression of avalanche

We report the realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in the hydrodynamic regime. The hydrodynamic regime is reached by evaporative cooling at a relative low density suppressing the effect of avalanches. With the suppression of avalanches a BEC containing 120.10^6 atoms is produced. The collisional opacity can be tuned from the collisionless regime to a collisional opacity of more than 3 by compressing the trap after condensation. In the collisional opaque regime a significant heating of the cloud at time scales shorter than half of the radial trap period is measured. This is direct proof that the BEC is hydrodynamic.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2006

Large atom number Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium

We describe the setup to create a large Bose-Einstein condensate containing more than 120x10^6 atoms. In the experiment a thermal beam is slowed by a Zeeman slower and captured in a dark-spot magneto-optical trap (MOT). A typical dark-spot MOT in our experiments contains 2.0x10^10 atoms with a temperature of 320 microK and a density of about 1.0x10^11 atoms/cm^3. The sample is spin polarized in a high magnetic field, before the atoms are loaded in the magnetic trap. Spin polarizing in a high magnetic field results in an increase in the transfer efficiency by a factor of 2 compared to experiments without spin polarizing. In the magnetic trap the cloud is cooled to degeneracy in 50 s by evaporative cooling. To suppress the 3-body losses at the end of the evaporation the magnetic trap is decompressed in the axial direction.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2006

Spin-Polarizing Cold Sodium Atoms in a Strong Magnetic Field

The efficiency of evaporative cooling, which is used for the creation of a Bose Einstein condensate, depends strongly on the number of particles at the start of the evaporation. A high efficiency can be reached by filling the magneto-optical trap with a large number of atoms and subsequently transferring these atoms to the magnetic trap as efficiently as possible. In our case (for sodium) this efficiency is limited to 1/3, because the magnetic substates of the F = 1 state, which is used in the trapping process, are equally populated. This limit can be overcome by spin-polarizing the sample before the transfer. For sodium atoms, however, the improvement is very small when it is done in a small magnetic field due to the large number of optical transitions in combination with the high optical density. In this article we describe spin-polarizing sodium atoms in a high magnetic field. The transfer efficiency is increased by a factor of 2. The high magnetic field makes the process also more robust against variations in the magnetic field, the laser frequency and the polarization of the laser beam.

physics.atom-ph↗