Optical Manipulation of Atoms at the Nanoscale

M. Babiker, V. E. Lembessis, Davıd L. Andrews +2 more

Following a brief overview of the physics underlying the interaction of twisted light with atoms at near-resonance frequencies, the essential ingredients of the interaction of atoms with surface optical vortices are described.It is shown that surface optical vortices can offer an unprecedented potential for the nanoscale manipulation of absorbed atoms congregating at regions of extremum light intensity on the surface.

Axel Kuhn

Georg A. Raithel, Natalya V. Morrow

Zheng Ling Wang, Ming Zhou, Wei Zhang +2 more

We propose a novel scheme to generate nanoscale optical trap for cold atoms near the tapered Ag nanotip, in which we take a microdisk cavity near the nanoscale trap and form a nanoscale solid-state system to realize the loading of the isolated cold atoms. We calculate the field distribution by the FDTD method near the nanotip, and discuss the intensity, the optical potential and van der Waals potential as well as the dipole force for 87Rb atoms. We find that the total potential and dipole force can form an attracting nanoscale trap for cold atoms with red-detuned field and it can realize the effective trapping and manipulation of the isolated atoms, which can enable efficient fluorescence photon collection and strong coupling in the coupled optical fiber.

Yang Li, Andrew DiLullo, Brandon Fisher +1 more

R. C. Fulton