1State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071 2Center for Cold Atom Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071 3University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049
Abstract:We experimentally observe the dynamic evolution of atoms in the evaporative cooling, by in-situ imaging the plugged hole of ultracold atoms. Ultracold rubidium atoms confined in a magnetic trap are plugged using a blue-detuned laser beam with a waist of 20 μm at a wavelength of 767 nm. We probe the variation of the atomic temperature and width versus the radio frequency in the evaporative cooling. Both the behaviors are in good agreement with the calculation of the trapping potential dressed by the rf signal above the threshold temperature, while deviating from the calculation near the phase transition. To accurately obtain the atomic width, we use the plugged hole as the reference to optimize the optical imaging system by precisely minimizing the artificial structures due to the defocus effect.