Optimized evaporative cooling using a dimple potential: an efficient route to Bose–Einstein condensation

The realization of Bose–Einstein condensation of 133 Cs relies on an innovative evaporative cooling technique using a dimple potential. Correctly loading an atomic gas into such a potential produces a dense sample with a high phase space density, ideal for evaporative cooling. We have numerically simulated both the loading process and the subsequent evaporative cooling from a dimple potential in order to elucidate the optimization of this technique. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this technique would be effective in cooling 85 Rb to quantum degeneracy and describe a simple scheme for its implementation.