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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Atomic layer deposition of atomic mirror for silicon

T. Fujimoto, Y. Shiomi, Hiroshi Kumagai, Ataru Kobayashi

Published Feb 8, 2007• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

There have been significant progresses in atom optics utilizing laser cooling techniques in recent years. Among them, we have been interested in an atomic mirror for silicon which can reflect silicon atoms. The atomic mirror consists of two layers on a sapphire substrate, and then atoms are reflected by the dipole forces from evanescent waves caused by the light reflected internally and totally at the interface of different refractive indices. In this study, we have constructed some structures of the atomic mirror. We tried atomic layer deposition techniques for preparation of both Al2O3 and TiO2 thin films, whose surface and interface roughnesses are well suppressed. In order to achieve the predicted enhancement of the evanescent waves, atomic layer deposition of the layer with the higher refractive index is especially important. It has found that absorption can be suppressed considerably by adding Al(CH3)3 precursor gas to the alternate introducing cycle of TiCl4 and H2O2 precursor gases. We use this effect which can improve homogeneity and flatness of layers significantly, to design an atomic mirror using atomic layer deposition.

DOI
10.1117/12.699991

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There have been significant progresses in atom optics utilizing laser cooling techniques in recent years. Among them, we have been interested in an atomic mirror for silicon which can reflect silicon atoms. The atomic mirror consists of two layers on a sapphire substrate, and then atoms are reflected by the dipole forces from evanescent waves caused by the light reflected internally and totally at the interface of different refractive indices. In this study, we have constructed some structures of the atomic mirror. We tried atomic layer deposition techniques for preparation of both Al2O3 and TiO2 thin films, whose surface and interface roughnesses are well suppressed. In order to achieve the predicted enhancement of the evanescent waves, atomic layer deposition of the layer with the higher refractive index is especially important. It has found that absorption can be suppressed considerably by adding Al(CH3)3 precursor gas to the alternate introducing cycle of TiCl4 and H2O2 precursor gases. We use this effect which can improve homogeneity and flatness of layers significantly, to design an atomic mirror using atomic layer deposition.
Cook and Hill suggested that the gradient of an optical field can be used to reflect atoms. To reflect atoms, the repulsive dipole force is used, which comes from the interaction between the electric dipole moment of atoms and the evanescent field. The evanescent wave is generated when light is totally reflected internally at the interface of different refractive indices. Later, the way to enhance the evanescent wave with a thin dielectric waveguide has been reported. We designed the atomic mirror for silicon atoms, whose structure enhances the evanescent field that is used to repel silicon atoms. We also set up the equations of motion for silicon atoms and derive trajectories of the atoms reflected by the atomic mirror. Optical intensity, incident angle of the light, and effective detuning are described in terms of controlling the trajectory of the atom.
Dielectric atomic mirrors are considered in which the repulsive force field owes its existence to an evanescent mode in the presence of a metallic capping layer. The theory of such an atomic mirror is constructed, assuming a finite thickness of the metallic layer with a finite plasma frequency and adopting the field-dipole orientation picture. The Rabi frequency together with the reflectivity for the light incident from within the substrate are evaluated, and their variations with the type of metal and layer thickness analyzed as useful indicators of the effectiveness of the system as an atomic mirror. A number of interesting features are pointed out, including a desirable enhancement. Solutions of the equation of motion for a given atom, subject to given initial conditions, lead to trajectories exhibiting reflection. The leading force fields controlling the dynamics include the average dipole image force plus the average light-induced forces due to the evanescent field. The parameters used to compute the trajectories are similar to those in recent experiments in which Rb atoms incident on a silver film deposited on a glass substrate have been shown to experience enhanced mirror action. The factors controlling the enhancement in general are pointed out and discussed.
Recent studies have involved electric quadrupole effects in atoms interacting with the evanescent mode. This type of surface mode is usually produced by the total internal reflection in a dielectric-vacuum atz=0, and its intensity distribution is very close to the outer surface z>0 half-space. Coating the planar surface of a dielectric substrate with multilayer dielectric thin film of different thicknesses provides an enhanced in such evanescent modes. This type of mode can be used purely as an atomic mirror. We show that the use of such elements for atomic optics gives significant enhancement of the evanescent mode magnitude without degrading the quality of the atomic reflection process. In addition, the decay depth of the evanescent mode can be conveniently controlled by design parameters. This property keeps the atom-light interaction timeτ, and thus the probability of decay emission, very low, which means a high degree of coherence property.
During the past two decades the dramatic developments in cooling and trapping of gaseous atomic samples has produced a variety of techniques to manipulate the external and internal atomic states with electromagnetic fields. The research efforts so far have mainly focused on studying the fundamental aspects of modern quantum physics, although numerous practical applications, e.g., in integrated matter-wave optics and quantum information processing, are expected to soon be added to the already established atom-optics products, such as atomic clocks and acceleration sensors. One of the most promising foundations for the practical applications of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and coherent matter waves is the technology based on the creation of microscopic atom traps on the surface of a solid substrate. This trapping technique has recently been used to successfully control the motion of microscopic atomic samples and to significantly simplify the creation of BEC.\n\nThe main research topic of this thesis is the development and design of surface-mounted atom traps on transparent dielectric substrates. Such traps could provide an extra flexibility and stability for the experiments, since they would allow unimpeded control of atoms with laser light and provide reduction of magnetic-field fluctuations associated with the thermal motion of free electrons in the substrate material. The thesis describes several novel approaches to the creation of such surface traps by superimposing repulsive evanescent optical waves with strongly localized magnetic or electric fields. These fields can be produced by either conductive or permanently magnetized, optically transparent patterns imprinted in a thin layer on a transparent dielectric substrate. The evanescent wave can also be used to cool the atoms in a gravitational field before loading them into the microtrap. The lateral confinement of the atoms on the evanescent wave can be realized with a thin-walled hollow laser beam, the creation of which is demonstrated in the thesis. The thesis also describes certain general aspects concerning evanescent-wave cooling. In particular, the influence that multiple reabsorption of resonance-frequency photons in a cloud of evanescent-wave cooled atoms has on the cooling efficiency is investigated. Also, a theoretical model based on classical statistical mechanics and thermodynamics is introduced to show how a microtrap on an evanescent-wave mirror can be used to decrease the temperature, increase the phase-space density, and provide temperature conserving spin-polarization of the atoms.
An alternative technique is proposed to create microscopic atom traps loaded with atoms from a gravito-optical surface trap (GOT), which is composed of an evanescent-wave mirror and a vertically aligned hollow laser beam. Our trap design is based on the use of current-carrying transparent conductors and transparent permanent magnets fabricated on the surface of a glass prism in the form of an internal structure of a refractive-index-matched thin dielectric film. The conductors can be fabricated of indium tin oxide (ITO) and the magnets of yttrium iron garnet (YIG). Different kinds of traps may be envisaged: i) spin-independent electro-optical ii) magneto-optical for either high- or low-field seeking atoms, and iii) purely magnetic for atoms in the low-field seeking states. In case iii), the magnetic-field minimum is located far enough from the film surface to make the contribution of the optical field negligible.
In the reflection of atoms by evanescent wave the amplitude of the light field can be changed not necessarily adiabatically slow in comparison with relaxation of internal atomic motion. An approach to describe the reflection of atoms by evanescent wave is the dressed state picture. An atomic mirror can be formed also by a focused elliptical laser beam, in which atoms intersect near the waist of the laser beam. A simple evanescent wave allows one to create a high homogeneous field along the surface of an atomic mirror, without a limitation on the intensity of the field in an evanescent wave. The size of an atomic mirror is usually restricted by the laser intensity required by the reflection. There are several processes at the reflection of atom by light which could lead to non ideal properties of the mirror. One of the remarkable properties of an atomic mirror is its ability to reflect atoms in a certain quantum state.