The BEC III apparatus is a third generation machine, intended to allow for easy manipulation of sodium Bose Einstein condensates (BEC). BEC is moved with optical tweezers from the production chamber into the auxiliary "science chamber". Once in the science chamber, condensates are loaded into magnetic and optical microtraps for study. The science chamber affords us flexibility in experimental design and rapid cycling of experiments without compromising the vaccuum required for condensate production. Here is a description of the apparatus (parts of Ananth Chikkatur's Thesis) (pdf, 1.7 MB)
In 2007, the appratus was upgraded to have both fermionic Lithium-6 and bosonic sodium-23. This allows us to study varius quantum phase with fermions or Bose-Fermi mixturess. We are preparing ans optical tweezer transport of fermionic lithium atoms into a science chamber which will allow maxium optical acces for varius optical latteice configurations.