Loading and compressing Cs atoms in a very far-off-resonant light trap - art. no. 023405

We describe an experiment in which 3x10(7) Cs atoms are leaded into a 400 m um crossed beam far-off-resonant trap (FORT) that is only 2 muK deep. A hig h-density sample is prepared in a magneto-optic tray, cooled in a three-dim ensional far-off-resonant lattice (FORL)I optically pumped into the lowest- energy state, adiabatically released from the FORL, magnetically levitated, and transferred to the final trap with a phase-space density of 10(-3). Sp ontaneous emission in the FORT is negligible, and we have compressed the at oms in the FORT to a spatial density of 2 x 10(13) atoms/cm(3). Evaporative cooling under these conditions proceeds rapidly.