Values of various parameters during the C-MOT stage

Table 1. Values of various parameters during the C-MOT stage. δC, δR are the cooling and repump detuning, IC, IR and IS are the cooling, repump and the saturation intensity respectively. Abstract We report the rapid accelerated thermalization of potassium (39K) atoms loaded in a magnetic trap, in the presence of a single dipole trap beam. More than an order of magnitude reduction in the thermalization time, to less than a second, is observed with the focused off-resonant beam occupying only 0.01% of the volume of the magnetic trap. A new method for testing for thermalization of relatively hot clouds is devised. The cold atoms are loaded from a magneto-optical trap (MOT) of 39K that has gone through a compressed MOT and sub-Doppler cooling stage. The atoms are prepared in the magnetically stretched |F = 2, mF = 2〉 state prior to loading into the hybrid trap. We also report a direct loading of 39K atoms, prepared in the state |F = 1〉, into a single beam dipole trap.