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We have realized a one dimensional optical lattice for individual atoms with a lifetime >300 s, which is 5 times longer than previously reported. In order to achieve this long lifetime, it is necessary to laser cool the at-oms briefly every 20 s to overcome heating due to technical fluctuations in the trapping potential. Without cooling, we observe negligible atom loss within the first 20 s followed by an exponential decay with a 62 s time constant. We obtain quantitative agreement with the measured fluctuations of the trapping potential and the corresponding theoretical heating rates., 4 pages, 5 figures

Ultracold $^{87}$Rb atoms are delivered into a high-finesse optical micro-cavity using a translating optical lattice trap and detected via the cavity field. The atoms are loaded into an optical lattice from a magneto-optic trap (MOT) and transported 1.5 cm into the cavity. Our cavity satisfies the strong-coupling requirements for a single intracavity atom, thus permitting real-time observation of single atoms transported into the cavity. This transport scheme enables us to vary the number of intracavity atoms from 1 to $>$100 corresponding to a maximum atomic cooperativity parameter of 5400, the highest value ever achieved in an atom--cavity system. When many atoms are loaded into the cavity, optical bistability is directly measured in real-time cavity transmission., 4 figures, 4 pages

We measure spin mixing of $F=1$ and $F=2$ spinor condensates of $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms confined in an optical trap. We determine the spin mixing time to be typically less than 600 ms and observe spin population oscillations. The equilibrium spin configuration in the $F=1$ manifold is measured for different magnetic fields and found to show ferromagnetic behavior for low field gradients. An $F=2$ condensate is created by microwave excitation from the $F=1$ manifold, and this spin-2 condensate is observed to decay exponentially with time constant 250 ms. Despite the short lifetime in the $F=2$ manifold, spin mixing of the condensate is observed within 50 ms.