An ultra-bright atom laser

Abstract

We present a novel, ultra-bright atom-laser and ultra-cold thermal atom beam. Using rf-radiation we strongly couple the magnetic hyperfine levels of 87Rb atoms in a magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate. At low rf-frequencies gravity opens a small hole in the trapping potenital and a well collimated, extremely bright atom laser emerges from just below the condensate. As opposed to traditional atom lasers based on weak coupling, this technique allows us to outcouple atoms at an arbitrarily large rate. We demonstrate an increase in flux per atom in the BEC by a factor of sixteen compared to the brightest quasi-continuous atom laser. Furthermore, we produce by two orders of magnitude the coldest thermal atom beam to date (200 nK).