Towards a juggling 87Rb atomic dual fountain

This paper presents methods for achieving and optimizing a Juggling Atomic Dual Fountain (JADF) of alkali atom 87Rb with one magneto-optical trap (MOT) vacuum chamber. The height difference of this two atomic fountains is 30 cm, the temperature and atom number of each atomic cloud are 2.0±0.2 μK and 1.4(±0.05)×108, respectively. The dependence of the recaptured atom number on the height of the pre-launched atomic cloud is investigated. This JADF provides a low temperature, large atom number and common-mode noise elimination atomic source for developing a highly stable, compact atomic gravity gradiometer.