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arXiv:1607.08662 · New Journal of Physics

A dynamic magneto-optical trap for atom chips

Jo Rushton, Ritayan Roy, James Bateman, Matthew Himsworth

Published Nov 9, 2016• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We describe a dynamic magneto-optical trap (MOT) suitable for the use with vacuum systems in which optical access is limited to a single window. This technique facilitates the long-standing desire of producing integrated atom chips, many of which are likely to have severely restricted optical access compared with conventional vacuum chambers. This 'switching-MOT' relies on the synchronized pulsing of optical and magnetic fields at audio frequencies. The trap's beam geometry is obtained using a planar mirror surface, and does not require a patterned substrate or bulky optics inside the vacuum chamber. Central to the design is a novel magnetic field geometry that requires no external quadrupole or bias coils which leads toward a very compact system. We have implemented the trap for 85 Rb and shown that it is capable of capturing 2 million atoms and directly cooling below the Doppler temperature.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/18/11/113020

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We describe a dynamic magneto-optical trap (MOT) suitable for the use with vacuum systems in which optical access is limited to a single window. This technique facilitates the long-standing desire of producing integrated atom chips, many of which are likely to have severely restricted optical access compared with conventional vacuum chambers. This 'switching-MOT' relies on the synchronized pulsing of optical and magnetic fields at audio frequencies. The trap's beam geometry is obtained using a planar mirror surface, and does not require a patterned substrate or bulky optics inside the vacuum chamber. Central to the design is a novel magnetic field geometry that requires no external quadrupole or bias coils which leads toward a very compact system. We have implemented the trap for 85 Rb and shown that it is capable of capturing 2 million atoms and directly cooling below the Doppler temperature.
This thesis describes the design and construction of a new magneto optical trap that is suitable for use in integrated atom chips and other vacuum systems in which optical access is limited to a single window. The trap design relies on the switching of optical and magnetic fields and can operate at frequencies at least within the region of 1 kHz to 60 kHz. The design does not need patterned surfaces in order to generate the necessary beam geometry, requiring only the use of a single, standard mirror. Early temperature measurements have indicated that the trap may be capable of sub-Doppler cooling, and that it is able to capture on the order of 1.7 x 106 atoms in a capture volume of 0.18 cm3.
Abstract We describe the application of displaced, or misaligned, beams in a mirror-based magneto-optical trap (MOT) to enable portable and miniaturized atom chip experiments where optical access is limited to a single window. Two different geometries of beam displacement are investigated: a variation on the well-known ‘vortex-MOT’, and the other a novel ‘hybrid-MOT’ combining Zeeman-shifted and purely optical scattering force components. The beam geometry is obtained similar to the mirror-MOT, using a planar mirror surface but with a different magnetic field geometry more suited to planar systems. Using these techniques, we have trapped around 6 × 106 and 26 × 106 atoms of 85Rb in the vortex-MOT and hybrid-MOT respectively. For the vortex-MOT the atoms are directly cooled well below the Doppler temperature without any additional sub-Doppler cooling stage, whereas the temperature of the hybrid-MOT has been measured slightly above the Doppler temperature limit. In both cases the attained lower temperature ensures the quantum behaviour of the trapped atoms required for the applications of portable quantum sensors and many others.
We have made magneto-optical traps (MOTs) on a chip which is able to cool and trap ~108atoms directly from a ~1cm3thermal background of87Rb. Diffraction gratings are used to manipulate the light from a single input beam to create the beams required for a MOT [1,2]. The gratings are etched into the surface of a silicon or GaAs wafer by either electron beam, or photo-lithography making them simple to fabricate and integrate into other atom chip architectures. We have developed a variety of gratings for utilisation both inside and outside a vacuum chamber - facilitating their incorporation into both new and existing devices. Unlike previously integrated cold atom sources on a chip [3,4] the atoms now sit above the surface where they can be easily imaged, manipulated and transferred into other on-chip potentials.
Magneto-optical traps (MOTs), indispensable to cold-atom-based quantum computing and quantum precision measurement, are increasingly desired in compact and stable form. Particularly, the six-beam 3D-MOT, distinguished by symmetric geometry and superior trapping performance, finds particularly broad applications. Conventional implementations, however, rely on complex and bulky free-space optics, hindering miniaturization, practical assembly, and long-term stability. Here, we demonstrate a compact six-beam 3D-MOT system that employs two multifunctional optical metasurface chips to implement the optical-field functionalities required for cooling and trapping atoms. By combining two metasurface chips and a vacuum cell, a photonic-integrated cell module (PICM) is implemented as the core assembly and the volume is only" 73*73*107 mm^3" . In success, 1.3 * 10^3 Rb atoms are trapped and cooled to the temperature of ~183 μK. It should be noticed that the laser beam is guided to the metasurface through optical fiber, thus such fully fiber-coupled architecture enables straightforward and stable operations. We believe that this work would pave a practical route toward compact and portable 3D-MOT.
Abstract We present a compact cold atom platform where an optical grating chip and planar coil chip are placed inside a compact vacuum chamber to create a magneto-optical trap. This approach significantly reduces the system volume to about 20 × 20 × 20 cm3 compared to conventional vacuum systems and offers greater flexibility in accessing the trapped atoms. We demonstrate the trapping of 3 × 105 cold rubidium atoms at a temperature of 100 μK in a vacuum pressure below 10−7 mbar. The simplified optical geometry, low power consumption, and high degree of integration make this a promising platform for portable and versatile cold-atom devices in quantum sensing, timing, and information processing.
The magneto-optical trap (MOT) is an essential tool for collecting and preparing cold atoms with a wide range of applications. We demonstrate a planar-integrated MOT by combining an optical grating chip with a magnetic coil chip. The flat grating chip simplifies the conventional six-beam configuration down to a single laser beam, and the flat coil chip replaces the conventional anti-Helmholtz coils of cylindrical geometry. Up to 106{10}^{6}106 cold 87Rb{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms are trapped by the planar-integrated MOT, with the atom cloud being approximately 6mm6\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}6mm above the chip surface. This configuration effectively reduces the volume, weight, and complexity of the MOT, bringing benefits to applications including gravimeter, clock, and quantum memory devices.