Fig. 3: Formation and stability of the CW BEC.
a, Profiles as in Fig. 2c, d for various hold times (marked in b) first during the formation of the BEC (A: 1.5 s, B: 1.8 s, C: 2.2 s, D: 2.5 s, E: 2.8 s, F: 3.2 s) and then during the steady state of the CW BEC (G: 15 s, H: 30 s, I: 45 s, J: 60 s). b, Evolution of the BEC atom number and the dimple atom phase-space density ρD depending on hold time thold after suddenly switching on all laser beams. The blue dashed line shows the result of the BEC evolution fitted to the data before 15 s using the rate-equation model (see Supplementary Information). The error bars show the standard deviation from binning about four measurements for each time. c, Histogram of the BEC atom number from 208 images for thold = 15 s, long after the establishment of steady state (blue star in b). No points fall below our BEC detection limit of 2,000 atoms. The 95% confidence interval (4σN) calculated from this dataset is given in b at 15 s (blue rectangle).
