Increasing the trapping lifetime of lithium-7 atoms in optical dipole trap

We have developed far-off resonance single beam dipole trap for optically cooled lithium-7 atoms. In the present paper we discuss some preliminary results. In order to improve performance of the trap we optimized the trapping time and increased the atoms number. The lifetime was increased by improving the vacuum from ≈ 3 × 10⁻¹⁰ Torr to ≈ 10⁻¹¹ Torr and preparing all the atoms in the selected atomic state (the lower ground state level). After vacuum improvement the single particle losses in the magneto-optical trap was reduced by 100 times and as the result the lifetime in the dipole trap reached 25 s. (paper)