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Quantum Nanophotonic Materials, Devices, and Systems

Diffractive chips for magneto-optical trapping of two atomic species

Zhaoning Yu, Garrett Hickman, Mark E. Saffman, Mikhail A. Kats

Published Aug 20, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Grating-based structures have recently been used as components of magneto-optical traps (MOT) to simplify the setup for trapping Rb atoms. Here, we design diffractive chips to trap more than one atom species. Our full-wave simulations show that a two-dimensional (2D) grating chip can simultaneously have high force-balancing efficiency for a wavelength of 780 nm for trapping Rb atoms and a wavelength of 852 nm for Cs atoms. We fabricated and characterized a mm-scale grating chip using electron-beam lithography, and are in the process of trapping experiments. Our work opens the door to compact multi-species MOTs.

DOI
10.1117/12.2570647

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Grating-based structures have recently been used as components of magneto-optical traps (MOT) to simplify the setup for trapping Rb atoms. Here, we design diffractive chips to trap more than one atom species. Our full-wave simulations show that a two-dimensional (2D) grating chip can simultaneously have high force-balancing efficiency for a wavelength of 780 nm for trapping Rb atoms and a wavelength of 852 nm for Cs atoms. We fabricated and characterized a mm-scale grating chip using electron-beam lithography, and are in the process of trapping experiments. Our work opens the door to compact multi-species MOTs.
This paper proposes a dual-color grating chip design method for simultaneously capturing dual atomic clouds ( 87 Rb and 133 Cs). By simulating key parameters such as the grating period, etching depth, duty cycle, coating material, and thickness, the optimal design parameters were determined ( T = 210 nm, r = 0.5, h 0 = 100 nm, d = 1150 nm) to ensure efficient dual-wavelength diffraction and maximize the number of captured atoms. Experimental results demonstrate the simultaneous trapping of 1.6 × 10 8 87 Rb atoms and 7.8 × 10 6 133 Cs atoms, thereby offering an approach for multi-species cold atom systems. This dual-species grating magneto-optical trap (GMOT) system has potential applications in precision measurements such as cold atom clocks, quantum interferometers, and quantum electrometry.
Compared with the conventional three-dimensional magneto-optical trap (3D MOT), the grating magneto-optical trap (GMOT) enables the cooling and trapping of atoms with only a single beam of light, thereby significantly reducing the overall volume of the device. Here, a grating chip with high diffraction efficiency is designed, and its parameters are optimized through simulations, which effectively suppresses the power of the zero-order diffracted light. Subsequently, the grating chip is fabricated and characterized, and using this chip, we successfully trap 1.7×106 atoms. The temperatures of the atomic cloud in the axial and radial directions are 5.6 mK and 17.0 mK, respectively. The successful implementation of the atom cooling and trapping experiment based on the diffraction grating provides important reference for the miniaturization of cold atom-based quantum sensors.
Abstract Diffraction gratings have simplified the optical implementation of magneto-optical traps (MOTs) to require only a single input beam, however reaching high atom number and fast loading has proven to be a challenge. We equipped an atom chip with a grating surface and paired it with a velocity-tunable 2D+-MOT as an atomic source to facilitate efficient loading together with magnetic trapping. Using uniform grating illumination, we magneto-optically trap 1.0 ( 1 ) × 10 9 atoms within one second, cool them to 14.1 ( 3 ) μ K , and transfer a quarter of them into the magnetic chip trap. This is a key step towards simple portable quantum sensors employing (ultra-)cold atoms.
We have made magneto-optical traps (MOTs) on a chip which is able to cool and trap ~108atoms directly from a ~1cm3thermal background of87Rb. Diffraction gratings are used to manipulate the light from a single input beam to create the beams required for a MOT [1,2]. The gratings are etched into the surface of a silicon or GaAs wafer by either electron beam, or photo-lithography making them simple to fabricate and integrate into other atom chip architectures. We have developed a variety of gratings for utilisation both inside and outside a vacuum chamber - facilitating their incorporation into both new and existing devices. Unlike previously integrated cold atom sources on a chip [3,4] the atoms now sit above the surface where they can be easily imaged, manipulated and transferred into other on-chip potentials.