Martin Teichmann Atomes de lithium-6 ultra froids dans la ... - TEL

Chapter 3
Experimental setup
LASER, subst. masc.
“Plante de la famille des Ombellifères” (Ac. 1878–1935).
Le laser à feuilles larges, à racine cylindrique, a des fleurs blanches
disposées en ombelles larges et ouvertes (PRIVAT-FOC. 1870).
– Le Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé
This chapter gives a brief introduction to our experimental setup.
As it is already described elsewhere in detail [38, 39], I will give a brief
overview and make emphasis only on the parts that have been changed.
First I want to give a quick overview of the experimental procedure,
to help in the general understanding of the following sections. Our
experiment starts with the atoms in an oven, which is heated to create a
gas jet. The atoms are slowed down in a Zeeman slower, after which we
capture both isotopes, 6 Li and 7 Li, in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Using
a magnetic elevator, we transfer the atoms into a Ioffe-Pritchard trap, in
which we perform forced evaporative cooling on the bosonic isotope 7 Li,
at the same time sympathetically cooling the fermionic isotope 6 Li. In
the end, the atoms are transferred into an optical dipole trap to enable
us to study them in the states that are not magnetically trappable. After
another evaporative cooling stage in the optical trap we can perform our
experiments, which normally take place in a magnetic field around our
Feshbach resonance at 83 mT. As a last step, we switch off the optical
dipole trap and let the atoms expand, taking an absorption image at the
end.
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