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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

Atom spinning around an optical fiber: Bound states and guiding

V. I. Balykin, Fam Le Kien, Jian Liang, Makoto Morinaga, K. Hakuta

Published Jan 1, 2004• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose and examine a scheme to bind atoms in stable orbits around a very thin optical fiber with a propagating fundamental light mode. Our main conclusion is that the neutral atoms can be trapped in two dimensions around the photon-carrying fiber at a submicron distance from the fiber surface.
DOI
10.1364/iqec.2004.itua7

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We suggest using an evanescent wave around a thin fiber to trap atoms. We show that the gradient force of a red-detuned evanescent-wave field in the fundamental mode of a silica fiber can balance the centrifugal force when the fiber diameter is about two times smaller than the wavelength of the light and the component of the angular momentum of the atoms along the fiber axis is in an appropriate range. As an example, the system should be realizable for cesium atoms at a temperature of less than 0.29mK0.29\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mK}0.29mK using a silica fiber with a radius of $0.2\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$ and a $1.3\text{\ensuremath{-}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$-wavelength light with a power of about 27mW27\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mW}27mW.
We suggest using a two-color evanescent light field around a subwavelength-diameter fiber to trap and guide atoms. The optical fiber carries a red-detuned light and a blue-detuned light, with both modes far from resonance. When both input light fields are circularly polarized, a set of trapping minima of the total potential in the transverse plane is formed as a ring around the fiber. This design allows confinement of atoms to a cylindrical shell around the fiber. When one or both of the input light fields are linearly polarized, the total potential has two local minimum points in the transverse plane. This design allows confinement of atoms to two straight lines parallel to the fiber axis. Due to the small thickness of the fiber, we can use far-off-resonance fields with substantially differing evanescent decay lengths to produce a net potential with a large depth, a large coherence time, and a large trap lifetime. For example, a 0.2-\ensuremath{\mu}m-radius silica fiber carrying 30 mW of 1.06-\ensuremath{\mu}m-wavelength light and 29 mW of 700-nm-wavelength light, both fields circularly polarized at the input, gives for cesium atoms a trap depth of 2.9 mK, a coherence time of 32 ms, and a recoil-heating-limited trap lifetime of 541 s.
In this thesis, I present the realization of a fiber-optical interface using optically trapped cesium atoms, which is an efficient tool for coupling light and atoms. The basic principle of the presented scheme relies on the trapping of neutral cesium atoms in a two-color evanescent field surrounding a nanofiber. The strong confinement of the fiber guided light, which also protrudes outside the nanofiber, provides strong confinement of the atoms as well as efficient coupling to near-resonant light propagating through the fiber. In chapter 1, the necessary physical and mathematical background describing the propagation of light in an optical fiber is presented. The exact solution of Maxwell’s equations allows us to model fiber-guided light fields which give rise to the trapping potentials and the atom-light coupling in the close vicinity of a nanofiber. Chapter 2 gives the theoretical background of light-atom interaction. A quantum mechanical model of the light-induced shifts of the relevant atomic levels is reviewed, which allows us to quantify the perturbation of the atomic states due to the presence of the trapping light-fields. The experimental realization of the fiber-based atom trap is the focus of chapter 3. Here, I analyze the properties of the fiber-based trap in terms of the confinement of the atoms and the impact of several heating mechanisms. Furthermore, I demonstrate the transportation of the trapped atoms, as a first step towards a deterministic delivery of individual atoms. In chapter 4, I present the successful interfacing of the trapped atomic ensemble and fiber-guided light. Three different approaches are discussed, i.e., those involving the measurement of either near-resonant scattering in absorption or the emission into the guided mode of the nanofiber. In the analysis of the spectroscopic properties of the trapped ensemble we find good agreement with the prediction of theoretical model discussed in chapter 2. In addition, I introduce a non-destructive scheme for the interrogation of the atoms states, which is sensitive to phase shifts of far-detuned fiber-guided light interacting with the trapped atoms. The inherent birefringence in our system, induced by the atoms, changes the state of polarization of the probe light and can be thus detected via a Stokes vector measurement.