Description
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 various quantum phase with fermions or
Bose-Fermi mixturess. We are preparing an optical tweezer transport of fermionic lithium atoms into a science chamber which will allow maximum optical access for varius optical latteice configurations.
Our hardware
BEC 3 machine
Brand new science chamber connected to the main chamber
Optical setup for Magneto-optical trap (MOT)
Double species oven