Erbium Bose-Einstein-Condensate
Time-of flight image of a thermal atomic erbium ensemble (left) and a Bose-Einstein condensate (right)
Erbium is a rare earth element with a nonvanishing electronic angular momentum in the electronic ground state (L=5) and a large magnetic moment (µ=7µB). There are few experiments worldwide that investigate quantum gases of rare earth elements. In recent work, we have observed Bose-Einstein condensation of erbium atoms in a quasi-electrostatic optical dipole trap, based on the far off-resonant light of a CO2-laser operating near 10.6 μm wavelength. At present, the experimental setup is extended so that synthetic magnetic fields for erbium atoms can be generated by means of a Raman coupling.
Bonn atomic erbium dipole trap
