[Historical report created from GSU BEC Homepage:]

"At the CLEO/QELS conference in Baltimore, a research group from the Georgia Institute of Technology reported an all-optical approach to BEC.

They write:

A BEC has been created using all-optical methods on April 18, 2001.

We employ ⁸⁷Rb confined in a crossed beam dipole trap formed using two orthogonal CO₂ laser beams. We load from a simple vapor cell MOT and achieve initial phase space densities of > 0.001. We evaporatively cool the sample to BEC by ramping down the laser power in 2.5 seconds. The resulting condensates are spinor mixtures containing 35,000 atoms distributed between the M_F = -1, 0, 1 states.

The unique features of our technique should be extendable to more complex spinor condensates (e.g. ⁸⁵Rb), multi-atom (and molecule) mixtures, and species that cannot be confined magnetically.

Team members:

• Murray Barrett
• Jacob Sauer
• Prof. Michael Chapman

For further information, contact michael.chapman@physics.gatech.edu "