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Acta Physica Sinica

Fundamental principles, key enabling technologies, and research progress of atom chips

Mo Li, Feiliang Chen, Xiaojia Luo, Li-Jun Yang, Jian Zhang

Published Nov 5, 2020• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The laser cooling, trapping and manipulating of neutral atoms has become a valuable tool for scientists, providing innovative ways to probe the nature of reality and giving rise to transformative devices in the fields of precise measurement and quantum information processing. Unlike traditional complex and bulky atomic experimental facilities, atom chips, through the design, fabrication of surface-patterned microstructures, and the integration of devices on the substrates, can precisely control the magnetic, electric or optical fields on a micro-nano scale with low power consumption. It can realize strong trapping as well as coherent atomic manipulation. Since atom chip was first proposed twenty years ago, it has built a robust quantum platform for miniaturizing and integrating quantum optics and atomic physics tools on a chip. In this paper, first, we briefly review the development history of atom chips, then introduce the basic knowledge of micro potential traps and micro guides based on on-chip current-carrying wires. Afterwards, the key technologies about the chip material, design, fabrication, characterization and integration of atom chips are discussed in detail. We not only focus on the currently most active and successful areas - current carrying wires, but also look at more visionary approaches such as to the manipulation of atoms with real nano structures, say, carbon nano tubes. The design and fabrication principles of ideal atom chips are discussed as well. In the forth part, the worldwide plans and research projects involving with atom chip technologies are summarized, showing that many countries see this as an important foundational technology. Following that, the major developments in the application fields including atom clocks, atom interferometer gyroscope, cold atom gravimeter, etc are described. Finally, the challenges faced by atom chips towards practical application are pointed out and the prospects for their subsequent development are depicted.

DOI
10.7498/aps.70.20201561

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With the fast development and perfecting of laser cooling, trapping and manipulating of neutral atoms as well as microelectric fabrication techniques with micrometer and nanometer scale, a new branch subject of atom optics, atom optics and its atom has been formed. In this lecture, we mainly introduce integrated schemes and experimental results as well as recent progress of integrated atom optics and its atom chips, including the design schemes, microfabrication techniques and recent experimental results of atom optical elements and devices with surface microstructures, magnetic microstructure integrated atom optics, all optical microstructure integrated atom optics,and magneto-optical microstructure integrated atom optics and their atom chips. Finally, design principles of integrated atom chip and its open problems are discussed, and some potential application of integrated atom optics and its future development are briefly looked ahead.
The field of atom chips is a relatively new area of research which is rapidly becoming of great interest to the scientific community. It started out as a small branch of cold atom physics which has quickly grown into a multidisciplinary\nsubject. It now encompasses topics from fundamental atomic and quantum theory, optics and laser science, to the engineering of ultra sensitive sensors.\n\nIn this thesis the first steps are taken towards a truly integrated atom chip device for real world applications. Multiple devices are presented that allow the trapping, cooling, manipulation and counting of atoms. Each device presents a new component required for the integration and miniaturisation of atom chips\ninto a single device, capable of being used as a sensor.\n\nInitially, a wire trap was created capable of trapping and splitting a cloud of BoseEinstein condensate (BEC) for use in atom interferometry. Using this chip a BEC has been successfully created, trapped and coherent splitting of this cloud has been achieved.\n\nSubsequently, the integration and simplification of the initial trapping process was approached. In all the experiments to date, atoms are initially collected from a warm vapour by a magneto-optical trap (MOT). This thesis presents a new approach in which microscopic pyramidal MOTs’ are integrated into the chip itself. This greatly reduces the number of optical components and helps to simplify the process significantly.\n\nAlso presented is a method for creating a planar-concave micro-cavity capable of single atom detection. One such cavity consists of a concave mirror fabricated in silicon and the planar tip of an optical fibre. The performance of the resonators\nis highly dependent on the surface roughness and shape profile of the concave mirrors therefore a detailed study into the fabrication technique and its effects on these parameters was undertaken. Using such cavities single atom detection has been shown to be possible. These cavities have also been sccessfully integrated into an atom wire guide.\n\nFinally a co-sputtered amorphous silicon/titanium (a-Si/Ti) nanocomposite material was created and studied for its use as a novel structural material. This material is potentially suitable for integrated circuitry (IC)/Micro-electromechanical-\nsystems (MEMS) integration. The material’s electrical and\nstructural properties were investigated and initial results suggest that a-Si/Ti has the potential to be a compelling structural material for future IC/MEMS integration.\n\nTo build all of these devices, a full range of standard microfabrication techniques was necessary as well as some non standard processes that required considerable process development such as the electrochemical deposition.\n\nThis thesis presents a tool box of fabrication techniques for creating various components capable of different tasks that can be integrated into a single device. Each component has been successfully demonstrated in laboratory conditions. This represents a significant step toward a real world atom chip device.
Atom optics has been a highly active field of research with many scientific breakthroughs over the past two decades, largely due to successful advances in laser technology, microfabrication techniques, and the development of laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms. This dissertation details several atom optics experiments with the motivation to develop tools and techniques for precision atom wave interferometry. It provides background information about atom optics and the fundamentals behind laser cooling and trapping, including basic techniques for cold gas thermometry and absorptive detection of atoms. A brief overview of magnetic trapping and guiding in tight wire-based traps is also provided before the experimental details are presented. ❧ We developed a novel laser source of 780 nm light using frequency-doubled 1560 nm fiber amplifier. This laser system provided up to a Watt of tunable frequency stabilized light for two Rb laser cooling and trapping experiments. One system generates Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical trap while the second is based on atom chip magnetic traps. The atom chip system, detailed in this thesis, was designed and built to develop the tools necessary for transport and loading large numbers of cold atoms and explore the potential for guided atom interferometry. Techniques and results from this experiment are presented, including an efficient magnetic transport and loading method to deliver cold atom to atom chip traps. We also developed a modeling tool for the magnetic fields formed by coiled wire geometries, as well as planar wire patterns. These models helped us design traps and determine adiabatic transportation of cold atoms between macro-scale traps and micro-traps formed on atom chips. Having achieved near unity transfer efficiency, we demonstrated that this approach promises to be a consistent method for loading large numbers of atoms into micro-traps. Furthermore, we discuss an in situ imaging technique to investigate magnetic field contours of the traps and the dynamics of atoms within those confining potentials. We also controlled the propagation along the atom chip guides by accelerating atoms with longitudinal magnetic gradients, and investigated an atom focusing scheme. ❧ While the atom chip wire guides perform a role analogous to optical fibers guiding light waves, ""free space"" cold atoms offer great opportunity for precision interferometry. We describe a second on-going atom optics experiment that measures gravity gradients using a pair of atom fountain interferometers separated by one meter. We have demonstrated Gravity Gradiometer resolution down to 4x10⁻⁹ g/m using a 40 kg test mass. The atomic physics subsystem is described in detail, including the vacuum, cold atom source, optics, magnetic coils and shields, and vibration isolation and compensation. The system is designed to be a compact, robust, transportable instrument, taking strides towards future gravity gradient measurements in the field. In the realm of space applications, there has been interest for micro-gravity science experiments aboard the International Space Station, along with instrument development for gravity mapping of Earth and planetary bodies with satellite-based instruments. Furthermore, there are ground-based applications for gravity imaging of local density distributions, precision measurement of gravity, as well as proposals for redefining the kilogram, detecting gravitational waves and determining the Gravitational constant.
Summary form only given. Neutral-atom manipulation using integrated micro-devices is a new extremely promising experimental approach to QIPC. In devices we call Atom Chips, atoms are trapped or move in microscopic potentials above a surface. The traps, guides, are formed by potentials created using electric, magnetic and light fields which originate in (microscopic) structures built on the surface of the Atom Chip. To execute a QIPC toolbox we plan to implement quantum optics techniques using integrated micro devices fabricated on the Atom Chip. We describe our recent experimental progress towards this goal, demonstrating the realisation of traps and guides for neutral atoms on a nanofabricated chip.
Laser-cooled atoms are a key quantum medium for atomic clocks, precision metrology, and atom interferometers, and they hold strong potential to advance quantum technologies for position, navigation, and timing. Realizing this potential requires moving cold-atom systems beyond laboratory environments. Integrated photonic chips provide a path forward by improving reliability and reducing size, weight, and power consumption, enabling portable and compact quantum sensors for real-world applications. This review surveys recent progress in laser-cooled atomic platforms, with a focus on the key components that enable on-chip integration of cold-atom systems. We discuss on-chip laser stabilization and linewidth-narrowing techniques, enhanced photon–atom coupling at the chip scale, miniaturized high-vacuum chambers, and the integration of on-chip magnetic coils for cold-atom sensing. Together, these developments are critical to the deployment of chip-scale cold-atom devices in both fundamental atomic physics and practical sensing applications. We conclude with an outlook on next-generation integrated cold-atom platforms and their potential impact on quantum technologies.
Atom chips are robust and extremely powerful toolboxes for quantum optical experiments, since they make it possible to create exceedingly precise magnetic traps for neutral atoms with minimal field modulations. Accurate manipulation of trapped atoms is feasible with magnetic and electric fields created on the atom chip. Therefore atom chips with high quality surfaces and extremely well defined wires were build (roughness < 20nm). Furthermore new generations of atom chips were developed, like the multi-layer atom chip with contact-free wire crossings, the sub-micron structured atom chip and the semiconducting atom chip. Extensive characterisation measurements of atom chip wires demonstrated that the wires stand current densities of up to 10^7A/cm^2 for seconds and voltage differences of more than 500V over 10µm. From the different materials tested doped silicon with a thin silicon dioxide layer is the best qualified substrate for atom chip fabrication. The atom chips fabricated during this thesis have been used in many successful experiments, yielding numerous results. Moreover this thesis established the basics for many further experiments in atom physics and quantum optics and delivers complete instructions for the fabrication of all developed atom chips as well as an introduction to the experiments.