Ultra-High Efficiency Magnetic Transport of 87Rb Atoms in a Single Chamber Bose?Einstein Condensation Apparatus

We report the ultra-high efficiency transport of cold Rb-87 atoms using a moving magnetic quadrupole potential generated by three overlapping pairs of fixed coils. The transfer efficiency is better than 97%, which is the highest ever reported to our knowledge. The temperature increase due to heating is less than 10 mu K when the initial cloud temperature is 110 mu K. Our setup is similar to the magnetic transferring belt design [Phys. Rev. A 63 (2001) 031401(R)], although it is simpler because the push coil is not required. We use it to transport atoms away from a magneto-optical trap to very close to the wall of the glass cell, facilitating future experiments employing three-dimensional optical lattices, high resolution in-situ imaging, and magnetic Feshbach resonances.