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High-Brightness Sources and Light-Driven Interactions

Sub-wavelength trapping and accelerating of neutral atoms with intense light carrying orbital angular momentum

Jamal Berakdar, Dominik Schulz

Published Jan 1, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the trapping and steering of neutral atoms in focused, high-intensity optical vortices. Appropriate combinations of Laguerre-Gaussian beams result in sub-wavelength, dynamical radial traps for atoms, controllable by the waist and the wavelength of the laser pulses.
DOI
10.1364/hilas.2018.hm4a.7

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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).
Abstract: We investigate the quantum behavior of the neutral atoms trapped by the two-dimensional potential due to an optical vortex. Our model is based on the pure optical trapped of sodium atoms in evanescent Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) light. If the LG light is tuned to the blue of the atomic resonance line, atoms will experience repulsive potential, which push them away from the high intensity region to the low intensity region. The parameters selected in this evaluation are taken to guarantee that atoms are sufficiently cooled below the recoil limit to permit several quasi harmonics trapped quantum states.
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.