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Annalen der Physik

Accelerating, guiding, and sub‐wavelength trapping of neutral atoms with tailored optical vortices

Dominik Schulz, A. Thakur, A. S. Moskalenko, Jamal Berakdar

Published Mar 27, 2017• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Single neutral atom mechanics is controllable by focused, high‐intensity optical vortices. The intensity‐dependent, laser‐driven motion of the atom's active electrons subsumes to a net transfer of the orbital angular momentum of the light to the neutral atom. The ponderomotive force on these electrons translates so into an unbounded or a bounded radial drift of the atom depending on its initial kinetic energy, as set by the temperature. Appropriate combination of laser beams results in sub‐wavelength, dynamical radial traps for tweezing atoms controllably, an effect that can be exploited for atom guiding, structuring, and lithographic applications. image

DOI
10.1002/andp.201600379

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Cover Picture: Ann. Phys. 5'2017

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Single neutral atom mechanics is controllable by focused, high‐intensity optical vortices. The intensity‐dependent, laser‐driven motion of the atom's active electrons subsumes to a net transfer of the orbital angular momentum of the light to the neutral atom. The ponderomotive force on these electrons translates so into an unbounded or a bounded radial drift of the atom depending on its initial kinetic energy, as set by the temperature. Appropriate combination of laser beams results in sub‐wavelength, dynamical radial traps for tweezing atoms controllably, an effect that can be exploited for atom guiding, structuring, and lithographic applications. image
Interfering optical vortices generate centrifugal traps and shot ramp for neutral atoms. The phenomena rely on the highly non-linear dynamics of the atomic charge in high-intensity laser fields that carries orbital angular momenta. The interference pattern of optical vortices enables controllable sub-optical wavelength traps with a structure tuneable by the optical vortices topological charges. A detuning between the frequencies of the interfering pulses set, the trapped atoms in controlled rotation. (Image: D. Schulze et al.; article number 1600379 in this issue).
In order to confine any object, it is necessary to exchange kinetic for potential energy in the trapping field, and in neutral atom traps, the potential energy must be stored as internal atomic energy. Thus practical traps for ground-state neutral atoms are necessarily very shallow compared with thermal energy because the energy level shifts that result from conveniently sized fields are typically considerably smaller than k B T , even for T = 1 K. Neutral atom trapping therefore depends on substantial cooling of a thermal atomic sample, and is often connected with the cooling process. In most practical cases, atoms are loaded from magneto-optical traps, where they have been efficiently accumulated and cooled to mK temperatures (see Sec. 20.3), or from optical molasses, where they have been optically cooled to μK temperatures (see Sec. 19.4). The small depth of typical neutral atom traps dictates stringent vacuum requirements, because an atom cannot remain trapped after a collision with a thermal energy background gas molecule. Since these atoms are vulnerable targets for thermal energy background gas, the mean free time between collisions must exceed the desired trapping time. The cross-section for destructive collisions is quite large because even a gentle collision (i.e. large impact parameter) can impart enough energy to eject an atom from a trap. At pressure P sufficiently low to be of practical interest, the trapping time is ~(10 -8 / P ) s, where P is in torr. This chapter begins with a discussion of ordinary, single-center traps, but also considers arrays of traps. Such “optical lattices” are playing an increasingly important role in research in atomic physics, so discussion of their properties is an appropriate part of the education of a student of the subject. Dipole force optical traps Single-beam optical traps for two-level atoms The simplest imaginable optical trap consists of a single, strongly focused Gaussian laser beam (see Fig. 20.1) [214, 215] whose intensity at the focus varies transversely with r as where is the beam waist size. Such a trap has a well-studied and important macroscopic classical analog in a phenomenon called optical tweezers (see App. 1.C) [216–218].
Magnetic trapping of laser-cooled neutral atoms has been demonstrated at NBS and is progressing in other laboratories. Confinement of any object requires exchanging kinetic for potential energy, and for neutral atoms, this necessarily derives from shifts of internal energy levels. This is implemented through the force experienced by the atomic magnetic moment in a carefully designed, highly inhomogeneous field. Since magnetic fields of convenient strength can shift atomic energy levels by only a few gigahertz (temperature ≌ 0.1 K), neutral atom traps are very shallow and must be loaded with very cold atoms. We present some motivations for using magnetic traps and then discuss the constraints and optimal configurations of various arrangements. For example, no trap can be isotropic. Next we discuss both the classical and quantum mechanical motions of trapped atoms. These motions are important for at least two reasons: First, several schemes under study for further cooling depend on knowing the position and velocity of the atoms, as well as the vector field at each point along the orbit. Second, magnetic traps depend on the atomic moment remaining aligned with the field as the atom orbits in the trap, and this precludes rapid motion through a low-field region.