Large atom number Bose-Einstein Condensate machines

Abstract

We describe experimental setups for producing large Bose-Einstein condensates of 23Na and 87Rb. In both, a high flux thermal atomic beam is decelerated by a Zeeman slower and is captured and cooled in a magneto-optical trap. The atoms are then transfered into a cloverleaf style Ioffe-Pritchard magnetic trap and cooled to quantum degeneracy with radio frequency induced forced evaporation. Typical condensates contain 20 million atoms. The design includes a second vacuum chamber into which ultracold atoms can be transported with an optical tweezers. This allows the flexibility to rapidly prepare and perform a wide variety of experiments.