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Journal of Physics Condensed Matter

All-optical nanotraps for atoms atop flat metamaterial lenses: a theoretical study

Vassilios Yannopapas, Nikolay V. Vitanov

Published May 21, 2009• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a novel setup for optically trapping neutral atoms based upon the focusing properties of metamaterials. The optical trap is created at the focal point of an inverted-opal crystal when the latter is illuminated by a localized light source. The trap is located away from the surface of the inverted-opal lens, rendering the Casimir-Polder attraction exerted by the lens on the atom negligible. The key properties of the proposed optical trap are its subwavelength dimensions, the tunability of the trapping frequency, the facile translation of the trap without moving the lens, and the potential for creating an array of traps. We also study the ground state of a cesium Bose-Einstein condensate formed within the proposed trap by solving the corresponding time-independent Gross-Pitaevskii equation.

DOI
10.1088/0953-8984/21/24/245901

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We propose a novel setup for optically trapping neutral atoms based upon the focusing properties of metamaterials. The optical trap is created at the focal point of an inverted-opal crystal when the latter is illuminated by a localized light source. The trap is located away from the surface of the inverted-opal lens, rendering the Casimir-Polder attraction exerted by the lens on the atom negligible. The key properties of the proposed optical trap are its subwavelength dimensions, the tunability of the trapping frequency, the facile translation of the trap without moving the lens, and the potential for creating an array of traps. We also study the ground state of a cesium Bose-Einstein condensate formed within the proposed trap by solving the corresponding time-independent Gross-Pitaevskii equation.
We propose a new class of nanoscale electro-optical traps for neutral atoms. A prototype is the toroidal trap created by a suspended, charged carbon nanotube decorated with a silver nanosphere dimer. An illuminating laser field, blue detuned from an atomic resonance frequency, is strongly focused by plasmons induced in the dimer and generates both a repulsive potential barrier near the nanostructure surface and a large viscous damping force that facilitates trap loading. Atoms with velocities of several meters per second may be loaded directly into the trap via spontaneous emission of just two photons.
We theoretically propose blue-detuned optical trapping for neutral atoms via strong near-field interfacing in a plasmonic nanohole array. The optical field at resonance forms a nanoscale-trap potential with an FWHM of 200 nm and about ∼370  nm away from the nanohole; thus, a stable 3D atom trapping independent of the surface potential is demonstrated. The effective trap depth is more than 1 mK when the optical power of trapping light is only about 0.5 mW, while the atom scattering rate is merely about 3.31  s−1, and the trap lifetime is about 800 s. This compact plasmonic structure provides high uniformity of trap depths and a two-layer array of atom nanotraps, which should have important applications in the manipulation of cold atoms and collective resonance fluorescence.
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We propose a novel, to our knowledge, scheme to form a controllable double-well optical dipole trap for cold atoms (or molecules) by using an optical system composed of a binary pi-phase plate and a lens illuminated by a plane light wave. We calculate the intensity distribution of the double-well trap and derive the analytical relationships between the characteristic parameters of the double-well trap (including geometric parameters, intensity distributions, and intensity gradients and their curvatures) and the relative aperture beta of the lens system. We also extend our controllable double-well trap to its trap array by using a binary pi-phase grating combined with an array of spherical microlenses. Our study shows that, if the pi-phase plate (or the pi-phase grating) is moved along the x direction, our double-well trap (or array of double-well ones) can continuously evolve to a single-well one (or an array of single-well ones) and vice versa, which can be used to study cold collisions between two atomic (or molecular) samples and atom interference with Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a double-well potential; to prepare quantum entanglement between two macroscopic atomic assembles, even to realize an all-optical double-well atomic (molecular) BEC (including an array of all-optical double-well BECs) by using optical-potential evaporative cooling; to form a novel optical lattice with a larger lattice constant; and so on.
We propose a novel scheme to form one- and two-dimensional arrays of double-well optical dipole traps for cold atoms (or molecules) by using an optical system composed of a binary π-phase grating and a lens illuminated by a plane light wave, and study the relationship between the maximum intensity I max of each optical well (or the maximum trapping potential U max for 85 Rb atoms) and the relative aperture β ( = a / f ) of the lens. We also calculate the intensity gradients of each optical well and their curvatures, and estimate the spontaneous photon-scattering rate of trapped atom in each well, including Rayleigh and Raman scattering rates. Our study shows that the proposed 1D and 2D arrays of double-well traps can be used to prepare 1D and 2D novel optical lattices with cold atoms (or molecules), or form an all-optically integrated atom optical chip, or even to realize an array of all-optical double-well atomic (or molecular) Bose–Einstein condensates by optical-potential evaporative cooling, and so on.
Trapped neutral atoms are one of the leading platforms for quantum information technologies, in particular for quantum computing, but scaling them to array sizes needed for utility-scale quantum computing is a major engineering challenge. Here we review optical metasurfaces as an enabling technology that provides fine control over the phase, amplitude, and polarization of light, with pixel counts far exceeding what is available with spatial light modulators (SLMs) and other active devices. The large pixel counts have recently led to demonstrations of arrays of optical tweezers with hundreds of thousands of sites and arrays of optical bottle-beams with complex three-dimensional trapping profiles. The flexibility and scalability of optical metasurfaces provides a route towards miniaturized, integrated, and highly scalable atomic experiments and instruments.