Dresden 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 26: Poster III
A 26.70: Poster
Donnerstag, 17. März 2011, 16:00–18:30, P2
Towards an Erbium BEC — •Albert Frisch1, Johannes Schindler1, Alexander Rietzler1, Rudolf Grimm1,2, and Francesca Ferlaino1 — 1Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria — 2Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Over the last years, the frontiers of ultracold quantum gases have been enlarged to new non-alkali atomic species, opening up intriguing possibilities for a variety of novel applications. We propose to produce and study quantum gases of erbium atoms. Erbium (Er) is an extremely heavy (166 a.u.) and strongly magnetic (7 µB) rare-earth atom with a rich isotopic variety and a complex energy level structure. The unique combination of interesting properties allows studies of dipolar effects where the anisotropic and long-range dipole-dipole interactions dominate over the simple isotropic contact interaction. With Er Feshbach molecules a more extreme situation can be achieved where the strength of the dipole-dipole interaction even gets comparable to the one between ground-state polar molecules. We present the latest progresses of our Er machine. These include spectroscopic measurements on the strongest cooling transition at 401 nm. The isotope shift has been determined and the hyperfine structure of the fermionic isotope 167Er has been resolved. Measurements on the velocity distribution after the Zeeman slower will show us the best strategy for directly loading the atoms into a narrow-linewidth magneto-optical trap operating on the 170 kHz broad transition at 583 nm.