A setup capable of cooling a cloud of Rubidium 87 atoms to temperatures lower than 1 microKelvin and condensing them into a new state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) was created on a microchip. The process begins by first laser cooling ~1 billion atoms in a magneto optical trap to a few 100 micro-Kelvin using a narrowband Ti:Sapphire laser. Cold atoms are then adiabatically transferred into a secondary ultrahigh vacuum chamber--kept at a pressure below 1 picotorr--via a magnetic conveyor belt. The atomic cloud is then compressed and transferred onto a high power microchip designed to confine and further compress the neutral atoms using large magnetic field gradients. Narrowband radio frequency waves are then used to evaporatively cool the gas to sub microKelvin temperatures forcing a phase transition. Once the BEC is made it can be launched vertically and used to probe nano-engineered potentials.
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