Rapid and Highly Efficient Generation of ⁸⁷Rb BEC via EIT Cooling

Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of dilute gases are a cornerstone for exploring many-body physics and implementing quantum sensors. However, traditional evaporative cooling to achieve a condensate is an inherently slow process (typically seconds to minutes) and highly inefficient, resulting in over 90% atom loss. This bottleneck in the duty cycle severely restricts the measurement bandwidth and efficiency. To overcome this challenge, we demonstrate a rapid, all-optical approach based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) cooling. While our prior work successfully applied this technique to produce fast quantum gases of ⁸⁵Rb, the resulting condensates were fundamentally unstable due to the negative scattering length, where attractive interatomic interactions lead to collapse at high densities. In this work, we aim to transfer this efficient cooling method to ⁸⁷Rb, an isotope with a positive scattering length, which is expected to provide the necessary repulsive interactions for a stable BEC. We target the realization of degeneracy within 500 ms, with minimal loss. The successful implementation of this high-flux, fast-cycling source would boost the sensitivity of next-generation quantum sensors.