Evaporative cooling by pulse width modulation (PWM) of optical dipole traps

Abstract

We introduce a method for cooling atoms in an optical dipole trap using pulse-width modulation (PWM) technique, without reducing the laser power of the dipole trap. The PWM technique involves digital modulation of the trap at a fixed frequency. The effective time-averaged dipole potential is lowered by adjusting the duty cycle of the modulation, thereby implementing evaporative cooling. We show that this technique effectively reduces temperature and enhances phase space density. A comparison with the standard method of evaporative cooling has also been made. Apart from the atom loss due to reduction of the effective trapping potential, we observe an additional loss channel originating from the lack of trapping potential during the trap “off” time. This atom loss is observed at different modulation frequencies which are an order of magnitude higher compared to trapping frequency of dipole trap. The PWM technique provides an alternative to traditional evaporative cooling in scenarios where it is preferred that the laser power of the trap should be constant.