Thesis of Maxime Denis

Defense of thesis Maxime Denis - Laboratory PhLAM

Abstract:

This manuscript presents the realization of an experimental device to produce Bose-Einstein condensates of potassium 41. This experiment was built to study the model of the kicked rotor in the presence of interactions. The choice of potassium 41 for this experiment is motivated by two reasons. The first is that the diffusion length of this atom is positive (allowing easy condensation) and has accessible Feshbach resonances. The second is that the wavelengths of its cooling transitions can be generated by powerful fiber laser sources in the telecom domain doubled in frequency. This has the advantage of being able to manufacture stable and robust laser systems for laser cooling and optical trapping of potassium 41. The particularity of our system lies in the frequency generation that takes place before the high power amplification and frequency doubling stages. The development of these laser benches acting on the two cooling transitions D1 and D2 enabled the laser cooling stages to be completed. Thanks to these laser benches, a magneto-optical trap gathering 3x10^(9) atoms was obtained. Compression and cooling with grey molasses of this magneto-optical trap allowed to reach a temperature of 16 µK and a density in the space of phases of 10^(-6). The following evaporative cooling steps are carried out successively with a quadrupolar trap, a hybrid trap (quadrupolar trap + optical trap) and to finish a crossed optical dipole trap. Condensates of 500,000 atoms were observed in this crossed optical dipole trap. We also identified Feshbach resonances that will allow the control of interactions. For the study of the kicked rotor, an original pulsed laser system was designed in parallel. The realization of this system was made from a high-power amplified telecom pulsed laser doubled in frequency. This system produces near infrared pulses at a repetition frequency between 100 kHz to 500 kHz with peak optical power up to 350W. This pulsed laser bench allowed us to perform the first experiments of the kicked rotor from this experiment. A control of the interactions with the identified Feshbach resonances will allow us to study the model of the kicked rotor in the presence of interactions.

Keywords : Bose-Einstein condensate,Disordered quantum systems,Cold atoms,Kicked rotor,Pulsed laser system