All-optical bubble trap for ultracold atoms in microgravity

In this paper, we present an all-optical method to produce shell-shaped traps for ultracold atoms in microgravity. Our scheme exploits optical double dressing of the ground state to create a short range strongly repulsive central potential barrier. Combined with a long range attractive central potential, this barrier forms the shell trap. We demonstrate that a pure spherical bubble, reaching the quasi-2D regime for standard atom numbers, could be formed from two crossed beams with a parabolic profile. An analytical study shows that the relevant characteristics of the trap depend on the ratio of the ground and excited state polarizabilities and the lifetime of the excited state. As a benchmark, we provide quantitative analysis of a realistic configuration for rubidium ensembles, leading to a 250 Hz transverse confinement for a 35 μm radius bubble and a trap residual scattering rate of less than 10 s−1.