Atomic Beam Collimation and Focusing

Wilhelm G. Kaenders, Frank Lison, A. Richter +2 more

Hong‐Bo Sun, Hironobu Inouye, Yasushi Inouye +1 more

We report here an experimental realization of nanopatterns by laser collimating (cooling) and focusing (trapping) chromium atom beams. The fabrication was facilitated by an extremely narrow laser linewidth, 5 MHz, equal to the linewidth of the resonance transition of the Cr atom.

Polykarp Kusch

Min Yan, Jianping Yin, Yifu Zhu

We observed guiding, collimating, focusing, and splitting of a continuous, low-velocity rubidium atomic beam with a blue-detuned dark-hollow laser beam. The low-velocity atomic beam was produced in a magneto-optical trap and was loaded into the dark center of the hollow beam. By overlapping the dark-hollow beam with the atomic beam, the rubidium atoms could be collimated or focused. When the dark-hollow beam intercepted the atomic beam at an angle, two spatially separated rubidium atomic beams were produced, one of which was extracted and guided by the dark-hollow beam.

Chao Li, Xiao Chai, Bochao Wei +4 more

Micro- and increasingly, nano-fabrication have enabled the miniaturization of atomic devices, from vapor cells to atom chips for Bose-Einstein condensation. Here we present microfabricated planar devices for thermal atomic beams. Etched microchannels were used to create highly collimated, continuous rubidium atom beams traveling parallel to a silicon wafer surface. Precise, lithographic definition of the guiding channels allowed for shaping and tailoring the velocity distributions in ways not possible using conventional machining. Multiple miniature beams with individually prescribed geometries were created, including collimated, focusing and diverging outputs. A "cascaded" collimator was realized with 40 times greater purity than conventional collimators. These localized, miniature atom beam sources can be a valuable resource for a number of quantum technologies, including atom interferometers, clocks, Rydberg atoms, and hybrid atom-nanophotonic systems, as well as enabling controlled studies of atom-surface interactions at the nanometer scale.

Tung H. Jeong, Bailey L. Donnally