ISBN 978-3-8439-0839-9

978-3-8439-0839-9, Reihe Physik

Purbasha Halder
Collision Studies in Ultracold Ground State and Metastable Calcium Atoms - To BEC or not to BEC

156 Seiten, Dissertation Universität Hamburg (2012), Softcover, B5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

This thesis presents experiments on the bosonic isotope of optically trapped ultracold calcium atoms in the singlet ground state as well as the metastable triplet states.

The atoms are prepared in an optical dipole trap by using a novel spatially selective loading technique which circumvents the complexities associated with prevalent narrow-line cooling methods for two-electron systems.

A Bose-Einstein condensate in the electronic ground state is achieved by implementing a forced evaporation scheme in a crossed-beam optical potential. The scheme is tailored to overcome significant three-body losses which are a result of the large scattering length of this state. Collision studies of metastable optically trapped calcium atoms are also presented here, along with a discussion on the feasibility of achieving Bose-Einstein condensation in these states by evaporative cooling.