Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 60, No. 1, January 2012, pp.

L1∼L5 Letters

Systematic Study of the Rf-induced Evaporation of 87 Rb Atoms in a Spherical

Magnetic Quadrupole Trap

Dahyun Yum, Jina Park, Wanhee Lee and Wonho Jhe∗

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-747, Korea

(Received 28 September 2011, in final form 28 November 2011)

We trap 87 Rb atoms in a spherical magnetic quadrupole potential consisting of a pair of anti-

Helmholtz coils. The number of trapped atoms is 2.16(7) × 108 , and the lifetime is 26 seconds. The
number, the temperature and the size of the atoms in a magnetic trap are controlled by the forced rf-
evaporative cooling technique. We obtain a sub-Doppler temperature of 33.7(5) µK in these atoms
at an evaporation frequency of 4.2 MHz in the magnetic quadrupole trap. We discuss the properties
of the atoms in the spherical magnetic quadrupole trap and the results of the rf-evaporation process.

PACS numbers: 32.80.Pj, 42.50.Vk

Keywords: 87 Rb, rf-Evaporation, Spherical magnetic quadrupole trap, Cold atoms
DOI: 10.3938/jkps.60.1

I. INTRODUCTION quadrupole trap is used as the preparation stage before

The development of trapping and cooling neutral
atoms in the past few decades provides a wide research
pool for atomic physics, precision measurement, con-
densed matter physics and quantum information. The
study of the dilute and cold neutral atomic system
was extended considerably by the achievement of the
magneto-optical trap (MOT) [1, 2]. Though the var-
ious studies have been reported for the MOT system,
it has a limitation to lower the temperature of trapped
atoms due to the scattering of the resonant photons. For
colder atomic cloud, another method of trapping atoms
without resonant photons and a new cooling mechanism
are necessary. The pure magnetic trap [3,4] and the rf-
evaporative cooling method [5–7] have come to the fore
for cold atomic systems. Various magnetic traps with rf-
evaporation reduce the temperature of the atomic cloud
beyond the limitation of the MOT to the transition tem-
perature of Bose-Einstein condensation [8,9].
Currently, various studies are underway on cold atomic
systems in an effort to investigate many types of trapping
potentials, not only magnetic potentials but also optical
potentials, with the evaporative cooling mechanism. The
spherical magnetic quadrupole trap is the simplest and
most basic method of creating a pure magnetic potential,
and rf-evaporative cooling is the most widely used way to
reduce the temperature of atoms in a magnetic potential
[6,10]. The spherical magnetic quadrupole trap provides
the advantage of effective evaporation due to its linear
potential shape. Therefore, rf-evaporation in a magnetic
loading in the optical dipole trap [11].
In this paper, we report the experimental results of
trapping 87 Rb atoms in a spherical magnetic quadrupole
trap and applying a rf-evaporation technique. After trap-
ping in a MOT and optical pumping, 2.16(7) × 108 atoms
are trapped by magnetic trap at a temperature of 58.2(3)
µK. We obtain the properties of the atoms in the mag-
netic quadrupole trap by in-situ absorption imaging. Be-
cause the absorption image profile of an atomic cloud in
a magnetic trap is deformed by the Zeeman shift [12], the
image has to be modified by considering the spatial ab-
sorption rate. The temperature of and the number of the
atoms in a magnetic quadrupole trap decreased by using
rf-evaporative cooling technique. For magnetic trapping,
the atoms have to be in a low-field-seeking state as there
are no magnetic maxima. In our case, the trapped 87 Rb
atoms are in the |F = 1, mF = −1> state. By applying
a radio frequency field, the hot |F = 1, mF = −1> state
atoms are transferred to the |F = 1, mF = +1> state
selectively and hot atoms are repelled from the magnetic
trap. We can control the number and the temperature
below Doppler limit of the atomic cloud in a magnetic
trap by using the rf-evaporation technique. The evapo-
ration result demonstrates the linearity of the spherical
magnetic quadrupole trap’s shape. This experimental
work on the spherical magnetic quadrupole trap and rf-
evaporative cooling will be a step forward to a more sta-
ble trap without spin-flip loss for colder atoms like Bose
Einstein condensation, for example, the time-averaged
orbiting potential (TOP) trap [4], the optical dipole trap
[11], QUIC trap [13].

∗ E-mail: whjhe@snu.ac.kr
-L1-
-L2- Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 60, No. 1, January 2012
Fig. 1. (Color online) Schematic diagram of the experi-
mental setup. Laser beams perpendicular to the page are not
shown.
II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
We used a double-MOT system with differential pump-
ing to overcome a contradiction about the vacuum. If a
large number of atoms is to be trapped, sufficient atomic
gas in the background is needed. However, If the atomic
cloud in a trap is to be kept cold, it is necessary to scat-
ter as little as possible with other thermal gas in the
vacuum, meaning that a low vacuum pressure is impor-
tant. For this reason, we utilize two chambers connected
by a pipe 1 cm in diameter and 40 cm in length. The
pressure of the 1st chamber is below 1 × 10−9 Torr, and
that of the 2nd chamber is below 1 × 10−11 Torr, both
values are measurement limits of the ion pump gauge.
The 2nd chamber is made of Pyrex glass to prevent the
generation of undesired eddy currents. A schematic di-
agram of the chamber and the laser setup is shown at
Fig. 1.
We use three different laser frequencies, named here as
trap line, repump line and depump line. The laser fre-
quency of the trap line is resonant on the F = 2 to the F
= 3 cycling transition of the 87 Rb D2 line. This is used
for the trap, the push and the probe laser. The repump
line is resonant on the F = 1 to the F = 2 transition,
and the depump line is resonant on the F = 2 to the F
= 2 transition. The 87 Rb D2 line and all laser frequen-
cies used are shown at Fig. 2. The trap lasers used for
the MOT at the 1st and the 2nd chambers are 2Γ red
detuned from the trap line. (Γ is the natural linewidth
of the 87 Rb atom; its value is 5.9 MHz.) The intensity of
the 2nd trap laser is 2 mW/cm2 . The push laser 1Γ red
detuned from the trap line is focused 3 mm above and
1 cm in front of the 2nd MOT’s center to avoid scatter-
ing with the trapped atoms in the 2nd glass cell. The
probe laser is resonant on the trap line at an intensity of
0.5 mW/cm2 . The intensity and the frequency of all of
the lasers are controlled by using an acousto optic mod-
ulator (AOM) and a mechanical shutter.
The spherical magnetic quadrupole potential used for
the MOT and the magnetic trap in the 2nd chamber is
created by using an anti-Helmholtz (AH) coil pair con-
Fig. 2. (Color online) 87 Rb D2 line data and the frequen-
cies of the laser used in the experiment. ωTrap is the frequency
of the trap line, ωDep is the frequency of the depump line, and
ωRep is the frequency of the repump line.
sisting of a piece of hollow 4 mm × 4 mm cooper wire,
and it is water cooled. The coils both have 30 turns (6
turns and 5 layers). The inner diameter of the coil is 8.5
cm, and the outer diameter is 15 cm. The separation
between the two coils is 6.5 cm. The AH coil pair at
the 2nd glass chamber is powered by a 15 kW DC power
supply (Lambda EMI) that is controlled by a RS232 con-
trol and is switched by an IGBT (insulated gate bipolar
transistor). The maximum magnetic field gradient is 270
G/cm at 400 A in the z direction (135 G/cm in the ra-
dial direction). Three power resistors (1 Ω, 100 W) are
connected in parallel at the switching circuit to consume
the remaining current in the coil when it is switched off.
To protect the IGBT switch from high-power electronic
shocks, a varistor (TNR 20E391K) is used. A diagram
of the high-power DC supply switching circuit is shown
in Fig. 3.
The evaporation coil pair has Helmholtz geometry
with two turns, and it has a diameter of 6.5 cm. The
rf current is created by a HP3658B rf signal generator
and is amplified by an amplifier (MINI Circuit, ZHL-
5W-1). We obtain all images by fluorescent imaging or
absorption imaging using a CCD camera (PCO, Pixel Fly
XS). All machines and circuits are controlled by a FPGA
(fieed programable gate array, NI PCI-7833R) and an
AO/DO board (NI PCI-6713). The FPGA has an inner
clock running at 40 MHz that is used as a time trigger
so that it is not interrupted by the multi-tasking process
of the computer.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The magneto-optically trapped atoms in the 1st cham-
ber are transferred to the 2nd glass chamber by the push
laser. We recapture the transferred atoms by MOT. The
 87
Systematic Study of the Rf-induced Evaporation of
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the switching circuit for con-
trolling the AH coil pair. R is the three 1 Ω, 100 W resistances
in parallel.
magnetic field gradient is 15 G/cm, and the number of
trapped atoms is 1 × 109 after 5 s of pushing. We obtain
the atom number by the fluorescence signal using a pho-
todiode and the absorption image using the CCD cam-
era. The absorption image is calibrated with the fluores-
cence result. The magneto optically trapped atoms are
compressed by increasing the magnetic field gradient to
70 G/cm within 10 ms. At the compressed MOT stage,
the detuning of the trap laser is increased to 3Γ, and the
intensity is lowered from 2 mW/cm2 to 1.4 mW/cm2 .
After compression, we turn off the repump laser and
turn on the depump laser for optical pumping so that
the atoms are in the F = 1 ground state in a magnetic
trap. We change the detuning of the trap laser to 4.5Γ
for efficient optical pumping. By 1 ms optical pumping
process, the ground state is changed from the F = 2 state
to the F = 1 state. We verify whether the optical pump-
ing process operates well or not by observing a shadow
image of the atoms when the probe laser is illuminated.
If the atoms are in the F = 2 state, the absorption signal
is detected by the CCD camera whereas atoms in the F
= 1 state are not observed by the probe laser when the
optical pumping works well.
After optical pumping, the atoms are trapped by the
spherical magnetic quadrupole trap potential. There are
no field maxima in the magnetic trap, only the weak-
field-seeking state atoms are trapped magnetically. In
the D2 transition of the 87 Rb atom, there are three
possible states in which to trap magnetically, the |F =
2, mF = +2>, |F = 2, mF = +1> and |F = 1, mF =
−1>. The magnetic sub-level of the atoms in the F = 1
state is chosen naturally when the magnetic quadrupole
trap is turned on. The other ground-state atoms, mF =
+1 or 0, are repelled or fall from the trap. In spite of
losing 2/3 of the atoms in magnetic trap, the optical
pumping process from F = 2 to F = 1 is a convenient
way to select the ground state.
The magnetic field created by the anti-Helmholtz coil
pair has the form B = B  (x, y, −2z), and the potential is
Uquad (r) = µB mF B  r, where µB is the Bohr magneton,
mF is the projection of the total angular momentum of

the atom on the magnetic field axis, B is the magnetic
field gradient and r = x + y + (2z)2 . A typical
2 2
Rb Atoms · · · – Dahyun Yum et al. -L3-
Fig. 4. (Color online) (a) Absorption image of the atomic
cloud in a spherical magnetic quadrupole trap. The scale
bar is 500 µm. (b),(c) The vertical(horizontal) profile of the
absorption image in (a). The line is a Gaussian fitting curve,
and the y axis is the optical depth. (d) Life time of atoms in
the trap. The line is an exponential fitting curve. From the
exponential fitting, the life time is 26 seconds.
absorption image and its profile are shown in Figs. 4(a)
– (c).
There is no fluorescent light when the atoms are in a
pure magnetic trap, so the absorption imaging method
is used to detect the atomic cloud. The atoms expo-
nentially attenuate the intensity of the probe laser as it
passes through the cloud via the optical depth (OD) in
a manner known as Beer’s rule;
Iabs = I0 e−OD , (1)
Iatom − Ibg
OD = ln[ ]. (2)
Iprobe − Ibg
We take three images to observe the trapped atoms. The
Iatom is an absorption image when the atoms exist. The
I0 is an image of the probe laser without trapped atoms,
and the Ibg is a background image with neither atoms
nor a probe laser for noise correction. The trapped Rb
atoms are in the F = 1 state, but the probe laser is
resonant on the F = 2 to the F = 3 transition. We
turn on the repump laser with the probe laser during
the imaging process. We obtain the density distribution
of the atoms when the sample is in the magnetic trap.
The in-situ imaging method has the advantage of being
able to observe a relatively small atomic cloud compared
to the TOF (time of flight) method detecting atoms in
ballistic expansion. By the Zeeman effect, the absorp-
tion rates of the probe laser at various positions of the
magnetic trap are different due to the inhomogeneous
magnetic field strength. The detuning change has to be
considered when analyzing the image obtained by in-situ
imaging. The column density at each pixel in the image
is obtained by the simple equation of OD/A, where the
-L4- Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 60, No. 1, January 2012

Fig. 5. Graphs of the (a) size, (b) number, and (c) temperature of atoms in a spherical magnetic quadrupole trap vs. rf
evaporation frequency. The magnetic field gradient is 100 G/cm for the z direction. In (a), solid line is the calculated size versus
the transition frequency from mF = −1 to mF = +1 in the magnetic trap.

absorption cross-section A is expressed as follows;
  2
Λ 3λ 1 After the magnetic trap, we apply a radio frequency
A= , (3)
2 2π δ(r)2
1+4 2
Γ
where λ is the wavelength of the transition, the detuning
δ(r) is a function of the distance r from the trap center,
and the branching ratio Λ for the F = 2 to F = 3 tran-
sition at the linear polarization beam is 7/3 in our case.
Though the distribution of atoms in the spherical mag-
netic quadrupole trap is not Gaussian, the size of the
atoms is obtained by a Gaussian fitting for calculational
convenience, and the profile is not far from a Gaussian
profile [14]. The hot atoms tend to be on the edger of
the potential whereas the cold atoms are near the center.
The temperature of the atoms in the spherical magnetic
quadrupole trap could be obtained from the size of the
atomic cloud, and the equation is
2 µB g 
T = B σF W HM , (4)
5 kb r
where µB is the Bohr magneton, g is the landé g-factor,
kB is Boltzmann’s constant, Br is the radial magnetic
field gradient and σF W HM is the radial full width at
half maximum size of the cloud. The number of atoms
in Fig. 4(a) is 2.16(7) × 108 , and the temperature is
58(3) µK. The image is taken after holding the atoms
for 3 s in the spherical magnetic quadrupole trap with
100 G/cm magnetic field gradient in the z direction. Fig-
ure 4(b) shows the profile of the Fig. 4(a) along the ver-
tical direction (the z direction), and the solid line is the
Gaussian fitting. Figure 4(c) is the horizontal profile (ra-
dial direction) of the atomic cloud in the trap. We can
detect the absorption signal of atoms in the trap after
60 s of magnetic trapping and the lifetime is obtained
26 s (Fig. 4(d)). The losses of atoms are caused by the
scattering of the background gas, the Majorana spin-flip
transitions at the magnetic field is zero near the center
of the trap and the fluctuation of the current of the AH
coil. The 26 s life time of the atoms in the trap is easy
to deal with it and indicates that the magnetic trap is
stable.
field, which is the transition frequency from the magnetic
sub-level, |F = 1, mF = −1> to |F = 1, mF = +1>.
The atom is coupled selectively with the rf field, and
the atoms in the mF = +1 level are evaporated out of
the trap. We observe that the atoms in the magnetic
spherical quadrupole trap after an evaporative cooling
process lasting 3 s for several radio frequencies. The
results pertaining to the size, number and temperature
of the atomic cloud at each frequency are shown in Fig. 5.
The spherical magnetic quadrupole trap has a linear
potential shape, and the energy difference between mF =
−1 and mF = +1 is also linear at each position. This
is well explained by the magnetic Zeeman shift, and the
energy shift of the magnetic sublevel at low fields is [15,
16]
∆E = gµB mF B  r. (5)
The result of the atomic cloud size is shown in the
Fig. 5(a). The solid line in Fig. 5(a) is the size of the
atoms in the magnetic trap calculated from the transition
energy between the mF = −1 state and the mF = +1
state for a magnetic field gradient of 100 G/cm in the
experimental condition. We surmise that the difference
between the experimental result and the calculated value
of the size is caused by the power broadening effect of
the rf-field [7]. The size of the atomic cloud for vari-
ous evaporation frequencies demonstrate the linearity of
the magnetic trap, showing that the magnetic spherical
quadrupole trap is stable and that the evaporation pro-
cess works well.
The number and the temperature of the atomic cloud
at various evaporation frequencies are shown in Fig. 5(b)
and (c). The number of atoms is shown on a log scale
for presentational convenience, and the line is a linear
fitting as a guide line. It is difficult to analyze an absorp-
tion image at frequencies below 4.2 MHz even when the
atomic shadow can be distinguished by eye. We deter-
mined that the temperature of the atoms in the magnetic
 87
Systematic Study of the Rf-induced Evaporation of
trap was T = 33.7(5) µK at 4.2 MHz. The number and
the temperature of the atomic cloud could be controlled
by rf-evaporation technique below the Doppler limit in a
spherical magnetic quadrupole trap.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
We trapped 2.16(7) × 108 87 Rb atoms in a spheri-
cal magnetic quadrupole trap, showing that the lifetime
was 26 s, which is enough time to study the trapped
cold atoms and to conduct experiments on them. The
properties of the atomic cloud in a spherical magnetic
quadrupole trap were obtained by an in-situ absorption
imaging method. After the atoms had been trapped
magnetically, we applied a rf-field resonance on the
mF = −1 state to the mF = +1 state transition. We
controlled the size, number and temperature of the atoms
in the magnetic trap below the Doppler limit by using
the rf-evaporation technique. The results show that the
spherical magnetic quadrupole trap is a stable linear trap
shape. We expect that well-controlled cold atoms in a
spherical magnetic quadrupole trap can be used to lower
the temperature even more by, for example, an optical
dipole trap to prevent loss of atoms due to the spin flip
transitions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Acceleration Research
Program of the Korean Ministry of Science and Technol-
ogy.
Rb Atoms · · · – Dahyun Yum et al. -L5-
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