Rapid cooling to quantum degeneracy in dynamically shaped atom traps

We report on a general method for the rapid production of quantum degenerate gases. Using Yb-174, we achieve an experimental cycle time as low as 1.6-1.8 s for the production of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of (0.5-1) x 10(5) atoms. While laser cooling to 30 mu K proceeds in a standard way, evaporative cooling is highly optimized by performing it in an optical trap that is dynamically shaped by utilizing the time-averaged potential of a single laser beam moving rapidly in one dimension. We also produce large (> 10(6)) atom number BECs and successfully model the evaporation dynamics over more than three orders of magnitude in phase space density. Our method provides a simple and general approach to solving the problem of long production times of quantum degenerate gases.