Abstract
The atom laser, a bright, coherent matter wave derived from a Bose–Einstein condensate, holds great promise for precision measurement and for fundamental tests of quantum mechanics. But despite significant experimental efforts, no method has been demonstrated to enable continuous and irreversible replenishment of a trapped Bose–Einstein condensate while simultaneously producing a free, coherent atom beam. Here, we report an experiment that uses two spatially separated Bose–Einstein condensates of rubidium in different internal hyperfine states, and show that while continuously output-coupling an atom laser beam from one Bose–Einstein condensate, we can simultaneously and irreversibly pump new atoms from a physically separate cloud into the trapped condensate that forms the lasing mode.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centres of Excellence Scheme. C.F. acknowledges the support of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation and N.P.R. acknowledges fellowship support by the ARC. All authors gratefully acknowledge the long-term scientific input, encouragement and enthusiasm of C. Savage and J. Hope. We thank S. Haine, H. Bachor and H. Wiseman for their careful reading of the manuscript. N.P.R. and C.F. thank J. Arlt’s Hannover Bose/Fermi group for their generous help in supplying an interim non-Kovar glass cell for the apparatus.
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Robins, N., Figl, C., Jeppesen, M. et al. A pumped atom laser. Nature Phys 4, 731–736 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1027
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1027
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