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Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference

Light torque on atoms

M. E. J. Friese, J.A. Andersen, Halina H. Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Andrew G. Truscott, N. R. Heckenberg

Published May 12, 2000• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Summary form only given. Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams of non-zero order (also called doughnut or vortex beams), with their unusual phase and intensity spatial variation, have lately attracted interest in atom trapping and cooling research. These modes have a cylindrical geometry with respect to the direction of propagation and an intensity variation described by I(r)/spl prop/r/sup 21/e/sup -2r2/, where r is the radial distance from the axis of propagation measured in units of the beam waist and l is the order of the mode.

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Summary form only given. Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams of non-zero order (also called doughnut or vortex beams), with their unusual phase and intensity spatial variation, have lately attracted interest in atom trapping and cooling research. These modes have a cylindrical geometry with respect to the direction of propagation and an intensity variation described by I(r)/spl prop/r/sup 21/e/sup -2r2/, where r is the radial distance from the axis of propagation measured in units of the beam waist and l is the order of the mode.
Laser cooling and trapping has led to a revolution in Atomic and Molecular physics. Optical traps created with blue-detuned laser beams are desired for numerous studies. One method of creating such a trap is with Laguerre-Gaussian laser beams. Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) laser beams are interesting because of their orbital angular momentum and radial intensity modes. Previous methods of creating higher-order LG beams did not yield pure LG modes. In collaboration with Digital Optics Corporation diffraction optics have been manufactured that yield higher-order LG laser beams with purities consistent with 100% of the intensity in the desire mode. We then create a donut-mode LG beam with this method to confine atoms from a MOT in both a blue-detuned and a red-detuned optical dipole force trap.
Summary form only given. Preparation of slow atomic beams has applications in experiments such as lithography, atom interferometry and in general for transporting atoms, for example from one vacuum chamber to another. Optical methods together with hollow fibers have been successfully employed to transport atoms, and all-optical methods using far off-resonant dipole forces have recently attracted much interest. Such all-optical methods have advantages in that far off-resonant dipole traps have potentially very low scattering rates, especially blue detuned hollow beam traps where atoms are restricted to low intensity regions where perturbations due to the light field are minimum. Optical atom guides also have practical advantages in that they can be switched, and can be easily introduced into high vacuum apparatus. Blue detuned hollow laser beams generated from a hollow optical fiber have been used to guide atoms (Xu et al, 1999; Babiker et al, 1994), and holographically generated doughnut beams have been used to guide and focus a cold beam of metastable neon atoms. In our experiments, we investigate the motion of cold rubidium atoms in far-detuned and near-resonant doughnut beams.
Abstract Counter-propagating co-axial Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) beams are considered, not in the familiar scenario where the focal planes coincide at z = 0, but when they are separated by a finite axial distance d . The simplest case is where both beams are doughnut beams which have the same linear polarisation. The total fields of this system are shown to display novel amplitude and phase distributions and are shown to give rise to a ring or a finite ring lattice composed of double rings and single central ring. When the beams have slightly different frequencies the ring lattice pattern becomes a finite set of rotating Ferris wheels and the whole pattern also moves axially between the focal planes. We show that the fields of such an axially shifted pair of counter-propagating LG beams generate trapping potentials due to the dipole force which can trap two-level atoms in the components of the ring lattice. We also highlight a unique feature of this system which involves the creation of a new longitudinal optical atom trapping potential due to the scattering force which arises solely when d ≠ 0 . The results are illustrated using realistic parameters which also confirm the importance of the Gouy and curvature effects in determining the ring separation both radially and axially and gives rise to the possibility of atom tunnelling between components of the double rings.
A spatial light modulator (SLM) has been used to create high quality Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) light beams, which have been used to study the guiding of cold rubidium atoms. The SLM allows real-time variation of the hollow guiding beam and permits direct comparison of the guided atom fluxes for different LG modes with minimal adjustment of the other optical components. It is demonstrated that, by increasing the azimuthal index l of the Laguerre–Gaussian beam, the radiation pressure pushing the trapped atoms may be reduced while maintaining the same guided flux. This is the first comparative study of hollow beam atom guiding, and further demonstrates the versatility of the SLM for studies in atom optics.