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arXiv:1608.02517 · Physical Review A

Fictitious magnetic-field gradients in optical microtraps as an experimental tool for interrogating and manipulating cold atoms

B. Albrecht, Yijian Meng, Christoph Clausen, Alexandre Dareau, Philipp Schneeweiß, Arno Rauschenbeutel

Published Dec 30, 2016• 38 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A technique of trapping and cooling atoms is experimentally demonstrated with an optical microtrap created in the near field of optical nanofibers, which makes an important step forward in the development of nanostructure-based interfaces for interrogating and manipulating cold atoms.
DOI
10.1103/physreva.94.061401

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Optical nanofibers – very thin, tapered optical fibers where the waist diameter is less than the propagating light wavelength – have been shown to be very useful tools for atom-light interactions. Their small size and relative ease of integration into optical fiber-based experimental setups, in addition to their minimal perturbation on magneto-optically trapped cold atoms, have ensured their adoption into cold atom physics. Here, we will discuss some recent applications of optical nanofibers to manipulate, trap, and control cold 87Rb atoms in ground or Rydberg states. We will present some recent experimental and theoretical results related to the interactions between the atoms and the optical nanofiber field and introduce some of the limitations observed.
We present experimental techniques and recently demonstrated results related to the optimization and characterization of our recently demonstrated nanofiber-based atom trap. The atoms are confined in an optical lattice that is created using a two-color evanescent field surrounding the optical nanofiber. For this purpose, the polarization state of the trapping light fields has to be properly adjusted. We demonstrate that this can be accomplished by analyzing the light scattered by the nanofiber. Furthermore, we show that loading the nanofiber trap from a magneto-optical trap leads to sub-Doppler temperatures of the trapped atomic ensemble and yields a sub-Poissonian distribution of the number of trapped atoms per trapping site.