Forced evaporative cooling

Repeated removal of high-energy trapped atoms while lowering the energy cutoff as the sample cools. Elastic rethermalization replenishes the tail. The useful outcome is increased phase-space density of an atomic gas, not temperature reduction alone.

A radiofrequency field induces transitions from trapped weak-field-seeking magnetic sublevels to untrapped states at a resonance surface. Atoms with sufficient energy reach that surface and leave. Sweeping the frequency changes the energy cutoff without equating every lost atom with the sample-average energy.

For a classical three-dimensional harmonic trap of fixed frequencies, $E=3N{k}_{B}T$. If each lost atom removes mean energy ${ϵ}_{\mathrm{ev}}=(\eta +\kappa )k_{B}T$, differential energy balance gives $d\ln T/d\ln N=(\eta +\kappa -3)/3$. The result assumes rapid elastic equilibration and excludes separate work from changing trap frequencies.

The ratio of an evaporation cutoff to thermal energy. Keeping the cutoff fixed while lowering temperature increases this ratio and reduces population in the escaping tail.