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Optics Letters

Long, narrow all-light atom guide

Yitong Song, D. Milam, W. T. Hill

Published Dec 15, 1999• 189 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A 1-mm-diameter all-light atom guide capable of transporting ultracold atoms tens of centimeters with high efficiency is described. We made the atom tunnel, a dark hollow beam that is blue detuned from resonance, by passing a few tens of milliwatts of energy from a TEM(00) diode laser beam through an optical sequence composed of three axicons and a simple lens. We demonstrate transport of 10(8)Cs atoms approximately 20 cm with minimal heating. We show that it is possible for one to control the direction and speed of the atoms in the tunnel by varying the detuning of the tunnel beam.

DOI
10.1364/ol.24.001805

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A 1-mm-diameter all-light atom guide capable of transporting ultracold atoms tens of centimeters with high efficiency is described. We made the atom tunnel, a dark hollow beam that is blue detuned from resonance, by passing a few tens of milliwatts of energy from a TEM(00) diode laser beam through an optical sequence composed of three axicons and a simple lens. We demonstrate transport of 10(8)Cs atoms approximately 20 cm with minimal heating. We show that it is possible for one to control the direction and speed of the atoms in the tunnel by varying the detuning of the tunnel beam.
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One of the more promising proposals for guiding and focusing neutral atoms involves dark hollow laser beams. When the frequency of the laser is detuned to the blue of resonance, the dipole force the atoms feel in the light confines them to the dark core where the atoms can be transported with minimal interaction with the light. The ability of the all-light atom guides to transport large number of ultracold atoms for long distances without physical walls leads to the possibility of a versatile tool for atom lithography, atom interferometry, atomic spectroscopy as well as for transporting and manipulating Bose-Einstein condensates. Furthermore since the atoms transported in all-light atom guides do not come into contact with matter, they can in principle be used to transport antimatter as well. In this work a hollow beam atom tunnel is demonstrated by guiding magneto-optically trapped ultracold cesium atoms with a hollow core laser beam. The 1mm diameter diffractionless hollow beam used to construct the atom tunnel was generated from a TEM00 mode diode laser at 852 nm using a series of axicons and simple lenses. The axicon generated hollow beam has a dark core extended for most of its diameter and
Atom guiding in an atomic funnel is very useful for many interesting atom optical experiments requiring the precise control of atomic motion. We have obtained a doughnut-shaped laser beam by coupling a Ti:sapphire laser into a hollow core optical fiber and collimating the output laser beam of the fiber with a microscope objective lens. Using such a doughnut-shaped laser beam [2 mm inner diameter and a 5 mm outer diameter at the trapping position (about 1m away from the objective lens)l, we have guided the trapped cold Rb atoms in the atomic funnel.
We present an experimental and theoretical study of efficient optical guiding of trapped cold atoms by a blue-detuned hollow laser beam. We have measured the atomic guiding efficiency with respect to the propagation direction of the hollow beam, which is in good agreement with numerical analysis. In particular, using a copropagating guide laser, we have obtained 20-fold enhancement of atom guiding with a guiding efficiency of 50%. Simulation shows that the efficiency can be increased to 80% with an improved hollow beam mode. The possibility of coherent atom guiding is also discussed.
Atoms can be transported through hollow optical fibres using laser light blue-detuned from the atomic resonance, which propagates through the fibre to create a repulsive evanescent light field at the inner fibre wall. We report here the first transmission of metastable helium (2 3 S 1 ) atoms through such hollow optical fibres. Using fused silica capillaries with several different geometries, laser radiation that is blue-detuned from the 2 3 S 1 2 3 P 2 transition was focused into the body of the capillary via total internal reflection from a 45° bevel polished at one end. Laser fields were used with both co- and counter-propagating configurations to the atomic beam.