Output coupling of a Bose-Einstein condensate formed in a TOP trap

Two distinct mechanisms are investigated for transferring a pure Rb-87 Bose-Einstein condensate in the \ F = 2, m(F) = 2 > state into a mixture of condensates in all the m(F) states within the F = 2 manifold. Some of these condensates remain trapped whilst others are output coupled in the form of an elementary pulsed atom laser. Here we present details of the condensate preparation and results of the two condensate output coupling schemes. The first scheme is a radio-frequency technique which allows controllable transfer into available m(F) states, and the second makes use of Majorana spin-flips to populate all the manifold sub-states equally.