Atom Optics in Microstructures

Ji Xian-Ming, Jin Jian-ping

With the fast development and perfecting of laser cooling, trapping and manipulating of neutral atoms as well as microelectric fabrication techniques with micrometer and nanometer scale, a new branch subject of atom optics, atom optics and its atom has been formed. In this lecture, we mainly introduce integrated schemes and experimental results as well as recent progress of integrated atom optics and its atom chips, including the design schemes, microfabrication techniques and recent experimental results of atom optical elements and devices with surface microstructures, magnetic microstructure integrated atom optics, all optical microstructure integrated atom optics,and magneto-optical microstructure integrated atom optics and their atom chips. Finally, design principles of integrated atom chip and its open problems are discussed, and some potential application of integrated atom optics and its future development are briefly looked ahead.

Viktor I Balykin

V. I. Balykin

Andrei I. Sidorov, Russell McLean, F. Scharnberg +5 more

We describe the use of permanent magnetic microstructures based on grooved, perpendicularly magnetised thin films fabricated by electron-beam lithography as optical elements for atom optics. Strong reflection signals and predominantly specular reflection have been realised for beams of cold caesium or rubidium atoms normally incident on grooved perpendicularly magnetised microstructures with periodicities of 1--4 \\mu m. We discuss the use of perpendicularly magnetised microstructures to construct miniature integrated atom optical elements, including magnetic waveguides, microtraps and beamsplitters, for manipulating atomic de Broglie waves on the surface of a substrate.

A. Grabowski, Tilman Pfau

Basic periodic trapping configurations is presented, which can be realized with multilayer microstructures. The trapping fields for the atoms (Ioffe Pritchard type potentials for magnetic trapping of atoms as well as quadrupole fields for magneto-optical trapping) are formed by two layers of crossed wires, which can be individually addressed. The possibility of producing multiple magneto optical traps (MOT) next to a surface in a controlled manner will be shown. This could be a first step to load ultracold atoms into an array of microstructured magnetic traps in a parallel way.

R. J. Celotta, Jabez J. McClelland, Robert E Scholten +1 more