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Optics Express

An off-axis rotating atom trap

J. Wu, Frank A. Moscatelli, E. Oh

Published Jan 1, 2006• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a novel configuration of a magneto-optical trap for cold atoms. The trap is very simple in design, employing only a small permanent magnet and an external Helmholtz bias coil. The trap's principal advantage is that the entire volume of the overlapping laser beams can be used for atom guiding and manipulation. An especially interesting effect is the rotation of the trapped atoms in circular motion as the permanent magnet is rotated. Clouds containing on the order of 2*10(6) atoms are rotated up to 60Hz forming a 5 mm diameter ring. This rotation can potentially be used in studying the behavior of cold atoms in 2-dimensional potential as well as applications for rotational sensors. We also present a classical theoretical model to simulate the experiment.

DOI
10.1364/oe.14.004969

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We present a novel configuration of a magneto-optical trap for cold atoms. The trap is very simple in design, employing only a small permanent magnet and an external Helmholtz bias coil. The trap's principal advantage is that the entire volume of the overlapping laser beams can be used for atom guiding and manipulation. An especially interesting effect is the rotation of the trapped atoms in circular motion as the permanent magnet is rotated. Clouds containing on the order of 2*10(6) atoms are rotated up to 60Hz forming a 5 mm diameter ring. This rotation can potentially be used in studying the behavior of cold atoms in 2-dimensional potential as well as applications for rotational sensors. We also present a classical theoretical model to simulate the experiment.
We investigate classical motions of cold atoms in three types (harmonic, linear, and Gaussian) of off-axis rotating traps in the presence of damping forces. When the radius of rotation of the trap is within the trap volume, the atoms are always attracted towards the rotation’s origin if the damping rate Γ is larger than the trap frequency ω ( i.e. , Γ > ω ). This is opposed to being repelled by the centrifugal force in a rotating reference frame. Contrarily, when the trap’s rotation radius is larger than the trap size, the atoms experience a time-averaged ring-shape trap at a high rotational frequency. These anomalous properties can be used to realize high-speed rotation sensors and effective static ring-trap potentials for manipulating cold atoms.
We report on a simple anisotropic magneto-optical trap for neutral atoms that produces a large sample of cold atoms confined in a cylindrically-shaped volume with a high aspect ratio (100:1). Due to the large number of trapped atoms, the laser beams that propagate along the optically thick axis of the trap to cool the atoms are substantially attenuated. We demonstrate that the resulting intensity imbalance produces a net force that spatially localizes the atoms. This limits both the trap length and the total number of trapped atoms. Rotating the cooling beams by a small angle relative to the trap axis avoids the problem of attenuation, and atoms can be trapped throughout the entire available trapping volume. Numerical and experimental results are reported that demonstrate the effects of absorption in an anisotropic trap, and a steady-state, line-center optical path length of 55 is measured for a probe beam propagating along the length of the trap.
The magneto-optical trap (MOT) is an essential tool for collecting and preparing cold atoms with a wide range of applications. We demonstrate a planar-integrated MOT by combining an optical grating chip with a magnetic coil chip. The flat grating chip simplifies the conventional six-beam configuration down to a single laser beam, and the flat coil chip replaces the conventional anti-Helmholtz coils of cylindrical geometry. Up to 106{10}^{6}106 cold 87Rb{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms are trapped by the planar-integrated MOT, with the atom cloud being approximately 6mm6\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}6mm above the chip surface. This configuration effectively reduces the volume, weight, and complexity of the MOT, bringing benefits to applications including gravimeter, clock, and quantum memory devices.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel scheme to magneto-optically trap neutral atoms in a ring shaped trap that can be used to transfer atoms into a circular magnetic trap with high density. This inturn enables to evaporatively cool atoms and study the behaviour of ultra cold gases in a periodic 2-dimensional potential. The circular magneto-optical trap itself is also of interest to investigate the properties of magneto-optical trap of deformed shape, such as reduction of photon-reabsorption.