Coherent atom optics on a chip

Qudsia Sara Quraishi, Vladimir S. Malinovsky, Jason S. Alexander +3 more

L. Mauritz Andersson, P. Krüger, Stephan Wildermuth +1 more

D. Gallego, Sebastian Hofferberth, Thorsten Schumm +2 more

Optical dipole traps and atom chips are two very powerful tools for the quantum manipulation of neutral atoms. We demonstrate that both methods can be combined by creating an optical lattice potential on an atom chip. A red-detuned laser beam is retroreflected using the atom chip surface as a high-quality mirror, generating a vertical array of purely optical oblate traps. We transfer thermal atoms from the chip into the lattice and observe cooling into the two-dimensional regime. Using a chip-generated Bose-Einstein condensate, we demonstrate coherent Bloch oscillations in the lattice.

Philipp Treutlein, T. Steinmetz, Yves Colombe +9 more

We review our experiments on quantum information processing with neutral atoms in optical lattices and magnetic microtraps. Atoms in an optical lattice in the Mott insulator regime serve as a large qubit register. A spin-dependent lattice is used to split and delocalize the atomic wave functions in a controlled and coherent way over a defined number of lattice sites. This is used to experimentally demonstrate a massively parallel quantum gate array, which allows the creation of a highly entangled many-body cluster state through coherent collisions between atoms on neighbouring lattice sites. In magnetic microtraps on an atom chip, we demonstrate coherent manipulation of atomic qubit states and measure coherence lifetimes exceeding one second at micron-distance from the chip surface. We show that microwave near-fields on the chip can be used to create state-dependent potentials for the implementation of a quantum controlled phase gate with these robust qubit states. For single atom detection and preparation, we have developed high finesse fiber Fabry-Perot cavities and integrated them on the atom chip. We present an experiment in which we detected a very small number of cold atoms magnetically trapped in the cavity using the atom chip.

Shengwang Du

Dominic William Berry, Howard M. Wiseman