Interfacing light and a single quantum system with a lens.

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Bose-Einstein condensation of 86Sr

We report on the attainment of Bose-Einstein condensation of 86Sr. This isotope has a scattering length of about +800 a0 and thus suffers from fast three-body losses. To avoid detrimental atom loss, evaporative cooling is performed at low densities around 3x10^12 cm^-3 in a large volume optical dipole trap. We obtain almost pure condensates of 5x10^3 atoms.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure