Yale University

Title: Cold Atoms Without Laser Cooling: The Frontier of Buffer Gas Cooling

Abstract: Cooling atomic vapors with cryogenic helium is a powerful technique which (unlike laser cooling) can be applied to any atomic species and can produce very large samples of cold atoms. The ability to cool a wider range of atomic species opens the prospect of exploring new regimes of quantum fluids, tests of fundamental symmetries, and atomic collisions. However most of these goals require the violent removal of the helium (to ensure the cold atoms are both trapped and isolated) and this has proved quite challenging. I will describe recent experiments which address these challenges and have succeed in tripling the number of atomic species which can be trapped using a cryogenic approach. We have achieved this advance through a number of technical innovations, including a novel cryogenic valve and magnetic traps which push the limits of superconducting technology. This work bridges the gap between atoms which can be cryogenically trapped and those which have been Bose-condensed. It also raises the possibility of trapping and evaporatively cooling the majority of atomic species in a single apparatus.