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Chinese Physics B

Demonstration of a cold atom beam splitter on atom chip

Xiaojun Jiang, Xiaolin Li, Haichao Zhang, Yuzhu Wang

Published Jul 26, 2016• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report an experimental demonstration of a new scheme to split cold atoms on an atom chip. The atom chip consists of a U-wire and a Z-wire. The cold atom cloud is initially loaded and prepared in the Z-trap, which is split into two separate parts by switching on the current of the U-wire. The two separate atom clouds have a distance more than one millimeter apart from each other and show almost symmetrical profiles, corresponding to about a 50/50 splitting ratio.

DOI
10.1088/1674-1056/25/8/080311

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We report an experimental demonstration of a new scheme to split cold atoms on an atom chip. The atom chip consists of a U-wire and a Z-wire. The cold atom cloud is initially loaded and prepared in the Z-trap, which is split into two separate parts by switching on the current of the U-wire. The two separate atom clouds have a distance more than one millimeter apart from each other and show almost symmetrical profiles, corresponding to about a 50/50 splitting ratio.
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We describe the production of BECs on a new type of atom chip based on silver foil. Our atom chip is fabricated with thick wires capable of carrying currents of several amperes without overheating. The silver surface is highly reflective to light resonant with optical transitions used for Rb. The pattern on the chip consists of two parallel Z-trap wires, capable of producing two-wire guide, and two additional endcap wires for varying the axial confinement. Condensates are produced in magnetic microtraps formed within 1 mm of surface of the chip. We have observed the fragmentation of cold atom clouds when brought close to the chip surface. This results from a perturbed trapping potential caused by nanometer deviations of the current path through the wires on the chip. We present results of fragmentation of cold clouds at distances below 100 μm from the wires and investigate the origin of the deviating current. The fragmentation has different characteristics to those seen with copper conductors. The dynamics of atoms in these microtraps is also investigated.
We present a toolbox for cold atom manipulation with time-dependent magnetic fields generated by an atom chip. Wire layouts, detailed experimental procedures and results are presented for the following experiments: Use of a magnetic conveyor belt for positioning of cold atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates with a resolution of two nanometers; splitting of thermal clouds and BECs in adjustable magnetic double well potentials; controlled splitting of a cold reservoir. The devices that enable these manipulations can be combined with each other. We demonstrate this by combining reservoir splitter and conveyor belt to obtain a cold atom dispenser. We discuss the importance of these devices for quantum information processing, atom interferometry and Josephson junction physics on the chip. For all devices, absorption-image video sequences are provided to demonstrate their time-dependent behaviour.
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Abstract : Gyroscopes based on ultracold atom interferometry have the potential to exhibit an intrinsic sensitivity larger by a factor of 4 x 1010 than for light-based interferometers. One of the major technical challenges for the advancement of atom optics and development of practical guided matter wave interferometers is the realization of coherent beam splitters. The overall focus of our research program is to develop a physical understanding of the conditions needed for coherent beam splitting and transport and use this knowledge to implement atom chip based interferometers using clouds of ultracold atoms. In this report we describe our experimental apparatus in detail and discuss the current progress towards interferometric measurements with clouds of ultracold atoms in a chip-based magnetic waveguide.