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arXiv:1307.2096 · Physical Review A

Immersing carbon nanotubes in cold atomic gases

C. T. Weiß, Polina V. Mironova, József Fortágh, Wolfgang P. Schleich, R. Walser

Published Oct 17, 2013• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the sympathetic relaxation of a free-standing, vibrating carbon nanotube that is mounted on an atom chip and is immersed in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Gas atoms colliding with the nanotube excite phonons via a Casimir-Polder potential. We use Fermi's golden rule to estimate the relaxation rates for relevant experimental parameters and develop a fully dynamic theory of relaxation for the multimode phononic field embedded in a thermal atomic reservoir. Based on currently available experimental data, we identify the relaxation rates as a function of atom density and temperature that are required for sympathetic ground-state cooling of carbon nanotubes.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.88.043623

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We study inelastic processes in the hybrid quantum system constituted by a carbon nanotube (CNT) in contact with an ultracold quantum gas, such as a cloud of thermal atoms or a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We present a parameter-free ab-initio approach for the loss rate based on the underlying scattering process, considering the two-dimensional character of the system as well as the exact Casimir-Polder potential. The predicted loss rates are in perfect agreement with recent experimental results, obtained both for a thermal cloud of rubidium atoms and for a BEC. For the trap loss of a thermal cloud, we find that retardation effects become important and contribute significantly, which emphasises the crucial role of the exact interaction potential.
We study inelastic processes in the hybrid quantum system constituted by a carbon nanotube (CNT) in contact with an ultracold quantum gas, such as a cloud of thermal atoms or a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We present a parameter-free ab initio approach for the loss rate based on the underlying scattering process, considering the two-dimensional character of the system as well as the exact Casimir-Polder potential. The predicted loss rates are in perfect agreement with recent experimental results, obtained both for a thermal cloud of rubidium atoms and for a BEC. For the trap loss of a thermal cloud, we find that retardation effects become important and contribute significantly, which emphasises the crucial role of the exact interaction potential. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2013
We investigate the possibility of trapping ultracold 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms near the outside of a metallic carbon nanotube, which we imagine using as a miniaturized current-carrying wire. We calculate atomic spin-flip lifetimes and compare the strength of the Casimir-Polder potential with the magnetic trapping potential. Our analysis indicates that the Casimir-Polder force is the dominant loss mechanism, and we compute the minimum distance to the carbon nanotube at which the atoms can be trapped to be larger than 100nm100\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm}100nm.
Abstract We theoretically investigate quantum decoherence in electronic currents flowing through metallic carbon nanotubes caused by thermal atomic vibrations using the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for an open system. We reveal that the quantum coherence of conduction electrons decays exponentially with tube length at a fixed temperature, and that the decay rate increases with temperature. We also find that the phase relaxation length due to the thermal atomic vibrations is inversely proportional to temperature.
We propose a scheme to actively cool the fundamental flexural (out-of-plane) mode of a graphene sheet via vacuum forces. Our setup consists of a cold-atom cloud placed close to a graphene sheet at distances of a few micrometers. The atoms couple to the graphene membrane via Casimir-Polder forces. By deriving a self-consistent set of equations governing the dynamics of the atomic gas and the flexural modes of the graphene, we show it is possible to cool graphene from room temperatures by actively (laser) cooling an atomic gas. By choosing the right set of experimental parameters we are able to cool a graphene sheet down to $\ensuremath{\sim}60 \ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$.
We investigate theoretically how cold atoms, including Bose–Einstein condensates, are scattered from, or absorbed by, nanotubes with a view to analysing recent experiments. In particular, we consider the role of potential strength, quantum reflection, atomic interactions and tube vibrations on atom loss rates. Lifshitz theory calculations deliver a significantly stronger scattering potential than that found in experiment and we discuss possible reasons for this. We found that the scattering potential for dielectric tubes can be calculated to a good approximation using a modified pairwise summation approach, which is efficient and easily extendable to arbitrary geometries. Quantum reflection of atoms from a nanotube may become a significant factor at low temperatures, especially for non-metallic tubes. Interatomic interactions are shown to increase the rate at which atoms are lost to the nanotube and lead to non-trivial dynamics. Thermal nanotube vibrations do not significantly increase loss rates or reduce condensate fractions, but lower frequency oscillations can dramatically heat the cloud.