Portable Atom Chip Vacuum Cell for Rapid BEC Production

We have developed a portable BEC system capable of fast loading of atoms onto an atom chip using a double MOT arrangement to spatially separate a high vapor pressure atom source region from an UHV atom cooling and chip region. The atom chip serves as one wall of the vacuum cell and has through-silicon UHV compatible electrical vias, which simplifies connection to on-chip conductors. The cell is constructed using an epoxy-less technique, which permits high bake-out temperature. We have observed that high bake out temperatures leads to excellent vacuum properties, but eliminates the effectiveness of light-assisted atom desorption as a means to modulate rubidium vapor pressure. Instead, fast loading in a 6 beam MOT is obtained by loading from a 2D MOT in a separate high vapor pressure region isolated from the UHV section with a 1 mm aperture. Captured atom flux is as high as 10$^{9}$ atoms/sec in the 6-beam MOT.