We report the realization of a robust magnetic transport scheme to bring > 3 × 10 8 ultracold 87 Rb atoms into a cryostat. The sequence starts with standard laser cooling and trapping of 87 Rb atoms, transporting first horizontally and then vertically through the radiation shields into a cryostat by a series of normal-and superconducting magnetic coils. Loading the atoms in a superconducting microtrap paves the way for studying the interaction of ultracold atoms with superconducting surfaces and quantum devices requiring cryogenic temperatures.

We consider laser-pumped one-dimensional two-component bosons in a parabolic trap embedded in a high-finesse optical cavity. Above a threshold pump power, the photons that populate the cavity modify the effective atom trap and mediate a coupling between the two components of the Bose-Einstein condensate. We calculate the ground state of the laser-pumped system and find different stages of selforganization depending on the power of the laser. The modified potential and the laser-mediated coupling between the atomic components give rise to rich many-body physics: an increase of the pump power triggers a self-organization of the atoms while an even larger pump power causes correlations between the self-organized atoms-the BEC becomes fragmented and the reduced density matrix acquires multiple macroscopic eigenvalues. In this fragmented superradiant state, the atoms can no longer be described as two-level systems and the mapping of the system to the Dicke model breaks down.

The physics of superconducting films, and especially the role of remanent magnetization has a defining influence on the magnetic fields used to hold and manipulate atoms on superconducting atomchips. We magnetically trap ultracold 87 Rb atoms on a 200 µm wide and 500 nm thick cryogenically cooled niobium Z-wire structure. By measuring the distance of the atomcloud to the trapping wire for different transport currents and bias fields, we probe the trapping characteristics of the niobium superconducting structure. At distances closer than the trapping wire width, we observe a different behaviour than that of normal conducting wire traps. Furthermore, we measure a stable magnetic trap at zero transport current. These observations point to the presence of a remanent magnetization in our niobium film which is induced by a transport current. This current-induced magnetization defines the trap close to the chip surface. Our measurements agree very well with an analytic prediction based on the critical state model (CSM). Our results provide a new tool to control atom trapping on superconducting atomchips by designing the current distribution through its current history.