Improved loading of an optical dipole trap by suppression of radiative escape - art. no. 011401

We investigate two-body loss in an optical dipole trap for Rb-87 atoms. In the presence of additional near-resonant light, such as from a magneto-opti cal trap during the trap loading, the two-body loss is strongly enhanced by long-range radiative escape. We suppressed this loss by a factor of 15 by adding a sideband to the optical dipole trap laser. This allows more atoms to be loaded into the optical dipole trap.