• BEC
• magnetic trap

This thesis describes an experimental apparatus and the operative procedures leading to load a population of 87Rb atoms in a magnetic trap. The machine used is devoted to the high rate production of Bose-Eintein Condensates (BECs).
An integral part of the system is the magneto-optical trap (MOT), where a cloud of atoms can be trapped and cooled by a spatially modulated force from atom-photon momentum exchange. Our experiment is based on a double MOT apparatus where a ve beams MOT acts as a source of slow atoms for a second six beam MOT in the Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) region. The light with the necessary properties to slow the atoms (power stability, spectral purity, spatial homogeneity) is produced with a Master Oscillator Power Amplier (MOPA) laser system. The resulting power for each beam used
for the MOTs exceeds the saturation intensity of the F = 2 -> F' = 3 transitions (saturated MOT). The number of atoms trapped with this set-up is of the order of 10^8.
The magnetic trap setup is a quadrupole and Ioe trap conguration (QUIC trap), which consists of a pairs of coils in anti-Helmoltz conguration and an Ioffe coil. They can produce a magnetic eld gradient up to 500 G/cm and allow easy optical access to the experiment.
Magneto-optically trapped atoms are compressed, cooled by the optical molasses technique, and then optically pumped into the |F_g = 2;m_F = 2> state before being loaded into the quadrupole trap. With a transfer effciency of 52
percent from the second MOT into the magnetic trap, this setup is capable of maintain the trapped atoms for a time of 45+/-4 s.
The atomic cloud released from the magnetic trap is probed by absorption imaging to determine the number of trapped atoms.
The next steps in order to produce a BEC are the changing of the trap conguration to the QUIC trap and the RF evaporative cooling process, to force the condensation of trapped atoms.