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Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference

Focusing an atomic beam with nanometer resolution using a laser as an atom-optical lens

Vasant Natarajan A, Robert E. Behringer, Gregory L. Timp

Published Jun 7, 1996• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Summary form only given. Recently it has been demonstrated that neutral atomic beams can be focused by use of a laser as an atom-optical lens. Standing wave atom-optical (SW) lenses have been of particular interest because of the potential for both high-resolution and high-throughput lithography. In this paper, using sub-Doppler optical cooling schemes in conjunction with mechanical collimation, and a SW with /spl sigma/=56 /spl mu/m, we have been able to achieve <20 nm resolution with contrast of at least 10:1, focusing a thermal atomic sodium beam using 589-nm light corresponding to the D/sub 2/ transition.

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Summary form only given. Recently it has been demonstrated that neutral atomic beams can be focused by use of a laser as an atom-optical lens. Standing wave atom-optical (SW) lenses have been of particular interest because of the potential for both high-resolution and high-throughput lithography. In this paper, using sub-Doppler optical cooling schemes in conjunction with mechanical collimation, and a SW with /spl sigma/=56 /spl mu/m, we have been able to achieve <20 nm resolution with contrast of at least 10:1, focusing a thermal atomic sodium beam using 589-nm light corresponding to the D/sub 2/ transition.
We show that light can be used as a lens to focus a collimated neutral atomic beam to submicron dimensions during deposition onto a substrate. We have used an optical standing wave at 589 nm as an array of cylindrical lenses to focus a perpendicular sodium beam into a grating on a substrate, with a periodicity of 294.3\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.3 nm. This result is the first direct evidence of submicron focusing of atoms by light, and represents a fundamentally new scheme for submicron lithography.
We show that light force lenses can be used to focus a thermal beam of neutral atoms with extremely high resolution (\ensuremath{\sim}20 nm) and high contrast (\ensuremath{\sim}10:1), finally making such atom-optical lenses viable for proposed applications. Our (cylindrical) lenses for sodium atoms are created by the dipole force within each period of a standing wave. We determine the spatial distribution of the focused atoms (with nanometer resolution) by allowing the atoms to deposit on a substrate and scanning with a UHV scanning tunneling microscope. We find that the requirements for optimum focusing are very large, positive detuning; short focal lengths; and a well-collimated atomic beam. These dependences can be thoroughly understood from a simple theoretical model. \textcopyright{}1996 The American Physical Society.
We developed an atom-optical system that utilized a laser diode (LD) for both laser atom cooling and trapping. The LD is easy to maintain and operate, and is therefore suitable for engineering applications. The neutral atom beam of chromium was collimated by Doppler cooling and focused by a standing wave lens, and then directly deposited onto a silicon substrate. A nanograting structure with periodicity identical to the wavelength of the standing wave, 212.78 nm, was successfully achieved. The atom beam generation, collimating, focusing and deposition processes were experimentally and theoretically investigated.
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the light pressure force from an optical standing wave (SW) focuses an atomic beam to sub-micrometre dimensions. We start from a two-dimensional time-dependent Schrödinger equation and reduce it to a one-dimensional equation by a paraxial approximation. We calculate some theoretical limits on the focusing of an atomic beam by an SW optical field. It is found that two parameters, the atomic velocity and the intensity of the laser beam, play an important role in determining the deposition quality.