Cold Atom Physics Controlled by an ADwin System - Sponsored Whitepaper

ADwin-Pro Modular Real Time Data Acquisition and Control

CAS DataLoggers recently provided the data acquisition and control solution for an associate professor of physics at a major university running an experiment producing ultacold quantum gases containing either bosons or fermions. The experiment took place under ultra-high vacuum inside a pyrex glass cell. Researchers collected the atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) which consisted of 6 laser beams for each atomic species and a magnetic trap produced by two external coils with counter propagating current. While the MOT was on, bright purple LEDs caused light-assisted desorption of atoms from the walls of the cell so that they could be captured in the MOT. After a brief moment of optical molasses (with the lasers on but no magnetic field), the atoms were gently transported vertically about 5 cm to within 200 μm of a magnetic chip trap by changing the shape of the magnetic field with more coils. Current passing through a wire on the chip, along with external coils, was used to tightly trap the atoms. Radio frequency signals passed through another wire on the chip, which changed the shape of the trap and allowed the hottest atoms to escape, thus lowering the average energy of the atoms. This evaporative cooling could produce quantum degenerate gases, either Bose-Einstein condensates or degenerate fermions. To undertake this incredibly demanding application, the physics department needed a modular data acquisition system capable of highly-accurate measurements in real-time and which offered intuitive software with powerful graphing and display capabilities.