Fast production of Bose-Einstein condensates of metastable helium

We report on the Bose-Einstein condensation of metastable Helium-4 atoms using a hybrid approach , consisting of a magnetic quadrupole and a crossed optical dipole trap. In our setup we cross the phase transition with 2 × 10^6 atoms, and we obtain pure condensates of 5 × 10^5 atoms in the optical trap. This novel approach to cooling Helium-4 provides enhanced cycle stability, large optical access to the atoms and results in production of a condensate every 6 seconds – a factor 3 faster than the state-of-the-art. This speed-up will dramatically reduce the data acquisition time needed for the measurement of many particle correlations, made possible by the ability of metastable Helium to be detected individually.