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arXiv:1801.10371 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Plasmonic trapping potentials for cold atoms

Matthias Mildner, Andreas Horrer, Monika Fleischer, Claus Zimmermann, Sebastian Slama

Published May 17, 2018• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract This paper reports on conceptual and experimental work towards the realization of plasmonic surface traps for cold atoms. The trapping mechanism is based on the combination of a repulsive and an attractive potential generated by evanescent light waves that are plasmonically enhanced. The strength of enhancement can be locally manipulated via the thickness of a metal nanolayer deposited on top of a dielectric substrate. Thus, in principle the trapping geometry can be predefined by the metal layer design. We present simulations of a plasmonic lattice potential using a gold grating with sinusoidally modulated thickness. Experimentally, a first plasmonic test structure is presented and characterized. Furthermore, the surface potential landscape is detected by reflecting ultracold atom clouds from the test structure revealing the influence of both evanescent waves. A parameter range is identified where stable traps can be expected.

DOI
10.1088/1361-6455/aac5ac

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Abstract This paper reports on conceptual and experimental work towards the realization of plasmonic surface traps for cold atoms. The trapping mechanism is based on the combination of a repulsive and an attractive potential generated by evanescent light waves that are plasmonically enhanced. The strength of enhancement can be locally manipulated via the thickness of a metal nanolayer deposited on top of a dielectric substrate. Thus, in principle the trapping geometry can be predefined by the metal layer design. We present simulations of a plasmonic lattice potential using a gold grating with sinusoidally modulated thickness. Experimentally, a first plasmonic test structure is presented and characterized. Furthermore, the surface potential landscape is detected by reflecting ultracold atom clouds from the test structure revealing the influence of both evanescent waves. A parameter range is identified where stable traps can be expected.
Ultracold atom-traps on a chip enhances the practical application of atom traps in quantum information processing, sensing, and metrology. Plasmon mediated near-field optical potentials are promising for trapping atoms. The combination of plasmonic nanostructures and ultracold atoms has the potential to create a two dimensional array of neutral atoms with lattice spacing smaller than that of lattices created from interfering light fields -- the optical lattices. We report the design, fabrication and characterization of a nano-scale array of near-field optical traps for neutral atoms using plasmonic nanostructures. The building block of the array is a metallic nano-disc fabricated on the surface of an ITO-coated glass substrate. We numerically simulate the electromagnetic field-distribution using Finite Difference Time Domain method around the nanodisc, and calculate the intensity, optical potential and the dipole force for 87^{87}87Rb atoms. The optical near-field generated from the fabricated nanostructures is experimentally characterized by using Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopy. We find that the optical potential and dipole force has all the desired characteristics to trap cold atoms when a blue-detuned light-field is used to excite the nanostructures. This trap can be used for effective trapping and manipulation of isolated atoms and also for creating a lattice of neutral atoms having sub-optical wavelength lattice spacing. Near-field measurements are affected by the influence of tip on the sub-wavelength structure. We present a deconvolution method to extract the actual near-field profile from the measured data.
The paper reports on the optical detection and spectroscopy of ultracold atoms near a gold surface.A probe light field is used to excite surface plasmon polaritons.The refractive index of the atomic gas shifts the plasmon resonance and changes the reflected light power.Thus, the sensitivity of the detection is plasmonically enhanced.Absorption of photons from the evanescent wave is avoided by detuning the laser from atomic resonance which makes the detection scheme potentially nondestructive.The spectrum of the signal is determined by a Fano resonance.We show that atoms can be detected nondestructively with single atom resolution for typical parameters in cold atom experiments.Thus, the method is suitable for quantum nondemolition measurements of matter wave amplitudes.Experimentally, we measure a technically limited sensitivity of 30 atoms and extend the detection scheme to dispersively image the atom cloud near the surface.
When a laser Bessel beam light is totally reflected internally at the planar surface of a dielectric on which a thin film has been deposited, a surface plasmons with phase singularities can be produced. This two-dimensional plasmons lead to an attractive potential with enhancement. Using this effect, we construct a model for optical trapping cold atoms. Efficiency of the trap will be presented by an ellipse with average radius r in the ( x , y ) directions and the distance d from planar surface in the z -direction.
We report on the realization of a plasmonic dipole mirror for cold atoms based on a metallic grating coupler. A cloud of atoms is reflected by the repulsive potential generated by surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) excited on a reflection gold grating by a 780 nm laser beam. Experimentally and numerically determined mirror efficiencies are close to 100%. The intensity of SPPs above a real grating coupler and the atomic trajectories, as well as the momentum dispersion of the atom cloud being reflected, are computed. A suggestion is given as to how the plasmonic mirror might serve as an optical atom chip.
In this work, we construct a new model of optical trapping cold atoms with a metallic nano wire by using surface plasmon effect generated by strong field of laser beams. Using the skin effect, we send a strong oscillated electromagnetic filed through the surface of a metallic nano wire. The local field generated by evanescent effect creates an effective attractive potential near the surface of metallic nano wires. The consideration of some possible boundary and frequency conditions might lead to non-trivial bound state solution for a cold atom. We discus also the case of the laser reflection optical trap with shell-core design, and compare our model with another recent schemes of cold atom optical traps using optical fibers and carbon nanotubes.
We propose a scheme to generate one-dimensional (1D) dark hollow lattices to trap and guide cold atoms periodically at the nanometer scale by surface plasmons (SP) excited on the periodic metallic strips (arrays) with the blue-detuned light.Intensity and optical potential in the trap are calculated by Comsol method, and it shows that closed contour lines of SP intensity and optical potential can realize the effective trapping and guiding of cold atoms in our 1D lattices.Cold atoms are trapped in the region with a section diameter about 30 nm, by which the trap has a large intensity gradient (> 3 13 m W 10 ).