Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Atom guidance using evanescent waves in small hollow optical fibers and its applications
Haruhiko Ito, Keiji Sakaki, Wonho Jhe, Motoichi Ohtsu
Abstract
We report the recent progress of the experiments on guiding atoms by evanescent waves in micron-sized hollow optical fibers. The lateral manipulation accuracy is enhanced up to 1 micron with a large increase of more than 50 times on the guided atom flux. Moreover, the frequency tuning enables the fine control of the guided flux with a numerical accuracy of 10 atom/s. The atom-guidance scheme is applied to in-line isotope separation on rubidium atoms and measurement of the cavity quantum electrodynamic effect in a cylindrical dielectric. In addition, the feasibility of fabricating micron-sized structures with nanometric depth is discussed including the manipulation of a small number of laser-cooled atoms.