Abstract
The Cold Atom Laboratory on the International Space Station produces ultracold gases of rubidium and potassium in a tight magnetic trap near the surface of a magnetic chip. In order to use these samples in long-duration field-free experiments, the atoms must be moved away from the chip, expanded to larger volume, and released from the trap. We describe how these goals can be achieved using quasi-adiabatic techniques. For rubidium atoms, we demonstrate a displacement of 0.6 mm and expansion into a trap with a mean oscillation frequency of 6.4 Hz. The center-of-mass release velocity and the condensate expansion velocity are about 0.2 mm/s each. An unexpectedly large background magnetic field gradient is observed, which limits the usable interaction time for the released atoms.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the support team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including David Aveline, Jason Williams, Jim Kohel and Jim Kellogg. We thank Ted Delikatny and Michael Forbes at Washington State University for implementing and sharing the NLSE tests checking for internal condensate excitations. We thank Nick Bigelow and Naceur Gaaloul for sharing and discussing their STA results. We are also happy to acknowledge useful discussions with other members of the CAL PI team, especially Nathan Lundblad, Peter Engels, and Maren Mossman. Finally, we thank Mark Edwards for pointing out an error in one of the figures.
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Pollard, A.R., Moan, E.R., Sackett, C.A. et al. Quasi-Adiabatic External State Preparation of Ultracold Atoms in Microgravity. Microgravity Sci. Technol. 32, 1175–1184 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-020-09840-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-020-09840-w