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arXiv:1705.02425 · Physical Review A

Trapping of Bose-Einstein condensates in a three-dimensional dark focus generated by conical refraction

Dominik Pfeiffer, Ludwig Lind, J. Küber, F. Schmaltz, Alex Turpin, V. Ahufinger, J. Mompart, G. Birkl

Published Nov 27, 2023• 9 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present an efficient three-dimensional dark-focus optical trapping potential for neutral atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates. This ``optical bottle'' is created by a single blue-detuned light field exploiting the phenomenon of conical refraction occurring in biaxial crystals. The conversion of a Gaussian input beam to the bottle beam has an efficiency of close to 100% and the optical setup requires the addition of the biaxial crystal and a circular polarizer only. Based on the conical-refraction theory, we derive the general form of the potential, the trapping frequencies, and the potential barrier heights. We present experiments on confining a $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ Bose-Einstein condensate in three dimensions. We determine the trap shape, the vibrational frequencies along the weak axis, as well as the lifetime of ultracold atoms in this type of potential.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.108.053320

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We present an efficient three-dimensional dark-focus optical trapping potential for neutral atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates. This ``optical bottle'' is created by a single blue-detuned light field exploiting the phenomenon of conical refraction occurring in biaxial crystals. The conversion of a Gaussian input beam to the bottle beam has an efficiency of close to 100% and the optical setup requires the addition of the biaxial crystal and a circular polarizer only. Based on the conical-refraction theory, we derive the general form of the potential, the trapping frequencies, and the potential barrier heights. We present experiments on confining a 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate in three dimensions. We determine the trap shape, the vibrational frequencies along the weak axis, as well as the lifetime of ultracold atoms in this type of potential.
Conical refraction (CR) is an optical phenomenon observed in biaxial crystals (BCs) that has been a subject of renewed interest since the last decade [1], despite being predicted by W.R. Hamilton in 1832. CR occurs when a light beam propagates along one of the optic axes of a biaxial crystal with birefringence R0 = l·α, where l is the length of the crystal and α is its conicity [2]. Under such conditions, an input focused Gaussian beam with beam waist radius w0, is transformed into two concentric bright rings at the focal image plane of the system, as long as the condition R0 >> w0 is satisfied. These bright rings are separated by a thin ring of null intensity known as the Poggendorff dark ring (PDR), see Fig. 1.
We propose a novel gravito-optical atom trap composed of a blue-detuned, conical dark-hollow-beam propagating upward and the gravity field. When cold atoms are loaded into the conical dark-hollow-beam from a magnetic-optical trap and bounce inside the hollow beam, they experience an efficient hollow-beam induced Sisyphus cooling and repumping-beam induced geometric cooling. Our investigation shows that an ultracold and dense 87 Rb atomic sample with an equilibrium 3D temperature of about 1 μK can be obtained and the appearance of an optically-trapped Bose-Einstein condensation may be possible in this pure optical trap.
We investigate theoretically an original route to achieve Bose-Einstein condensation using dark power-law laser traps. We propose to create such traps with two crossing blue-detuned Laguerre-Gaussian optical beams. Controlling their azimuthal order $\ensuremath{\ell}$ allows for the exploration of a multitude of power-law trapping situations in one, two, and three dimensions, ranging from the usual harmonic trap to an almost square-well potential, in which a quasihomogeneous Bose gas can be formed. The usual cigar-shaped and disk-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates obtained in a 1D or 2D harmonic trap take the generic form of a ``finger'' or of a ``hockey puck'' in such Laguerre-Gaussian traps. In addition, for a fixed atom number, higher transition temperatures are obtained in such configurations when compared with a harmonic trap of the same volume. This effect, which results in a substantial acceleration of the condensation dynamics, requires a better but still reasonable focusing of the Laguerre-Gaussian beams.
The bottle beam configuration is a light field created by the interference of a pair of Laguerre–Gauss light beams with zero orbital angular momentum. In this work we show the theoretical study of the bottle beam as well as the use of this beam for the creation of a novel atom optical dipole trap namely the bottle atom trap. In such a trap the resulting dark trapping region is three-dimensional and has a cylindrical symmetry. These promising results show that this trap is a nice candidate for trapping Bose–Einstein condensates and may serve as an optical tweezer mechanism potentially useful for trapping micron-sized dielectric particles.
A novel optical set-up which enables cold atoms to be trapped in a finite set of miniature (sub-wavelength) bottle traps is highlighted. These bottle traps are formed when the atoms interact with a tightly focused standing wave due to two-counter propagating optical vortex beams possessing the same winding number ℓ=±1\ell=\pm1ℓ=±1 and the same circular polarization (σ=∓1)\sigma=\mp 1)σ=∓1). Tight focusing generates strong longitudinal field components which become responsible for an on-axis standing wave. The resulting optical potential leads to the axial confinement of far blue-detuned atoms. This completes the formation of the bottle trap, since the off-axis radial confinement is, as usual, provided by the optical potential due to the interference of the transverse components of the light. The main characteristics of the bottle traps are illustrated using typical experimentally-accessible parameters. Due to the spin-orbit coupling the trap parameters are tunable by changing the ellipicity of the light.
A novel optical set-up which enables cold atoms to be trapped in a finite set of miniature (sub-wavelength) bottle traps is highlighted. These bottle traps are formed when the atoms interact with a tightly focused standing wave due to two-counter propagating optical vortex beams possessing the same winding number ℓ=±1\ell=\pm1ℓ=±1 and the same circular polarization (σ=∓1)\sigma=\mp 1)σ=∓1). Tight focusing generates strong longitudinal field components which become responsible for an on-axis standing wave. The resulting optical potential leads to the axial confinement of far blue-detuned atoms. This completes the formation of the bottle trap, since the off-axis radial confinement is, as usual, provided by the optical potential due to the interference of the transverse components of the light. The main characteristics of the bottle traps are illustrated using typical experimentally-accessible parameters. Due to the spin-orbit coupling the trap parameters are tunable by changing the ellipicity of the light.