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Physics World

Cold-atom microscope feels the heat

Published Jul 1, 2011• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Physicists in Germany have invented a new kind of microscope that uses a gas of extremely cold atoms to map the surface of nanoscale structures.
DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/24/07/5

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Cold atoms promise versatile atomic chipsUsing a microelectronic chip to hold a cloud of cold atoms hovering above it, physicists in Germany may have developed an "atomic chip" that might eventually shunt Bose-Einstein condensates around an atom chip -just as electrons are shunted around a conventional silicon chip.This tiny circuit creates and manipulates a peculiar state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (p21).Previously these condensates were made using light or magnetic fields to cool and confine a gas of atoms.Electric currents travelling through wires in the atom chip create a confining magnetic field barely 1 mm wide.This field holds a cloud of 1600 rubidium atoms at a height of less than a tenth of 1 mm above the chip surface.Quantum mechanics dictates that atoms, being so small, have wavelike properties.Normally each wave bobs up and down independently.However, in a Bose-Einstein condensate all of the atomic waves are "coherent" -moving in step, in the same quantum state.Instead of behaving like a

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When an atom or a molecule interacts with a light beam, the light emitted or absorbed carries valuable information about the atomic or molecular structure. This phenomenon underlies the whole field of spectroscopy. But the interaction of a photon with an atom can be used to manipulate the atom as well as to probe its structure. For example, in an approach called optical pumping, invented by Alfred Kastler, one can use the resonant exchange of angular momentum between atoms and polarized photons to align or orient the spins of atoms or to put them in nonequilibrium situations. In his original 1950 paper Kastler also proposed using optical pumping to cool and to heat the internal degrees of freedom, calling the phenomena the “effet luminofrigorique” and the “effet luminocalorique.” Another famous example of the use of photon-atom interaction to control atoms is laser cooling. This technique relies on resonant exchange of linear momentum between photons and atoms to control their external degrees of freedom and thus to reduce their kinetic energy. Laser cooling was suggested independently by Theodor Hänsch and Arthur Schawlow for neutral atoms and by David Wineland and Hans Dehmelt for trapped ions. In an article written three years ago for PHYSICS TODAY (June 1987, page 34), Wineland and Wayne Itano presented the principle of laser cooling and the potential applications of cold atoms to fields of physics such as ultrahigh resolution spectroscopy, atomic clocks, collisions, surface physics and collective quantum effects. At that time laser cooling had brought temperatures down to a few hundred microkelvin, but unexpected improvements during the last three years have dramatically lowered those temperatures to only a few microkelvin. We now feel we understand the new physical mechanisms responsible for these very low temperatures.

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The major problem that physicists were trying to solve was that of the wave nature of the electron. In 1926, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger presented an equation that described the wave behavior of the electron in the hydrogen atom. The physicist Max Born suggested instead that these waves were waves of probability; that is, they represented the probability of finding the electron in some region of space. In fact, an electron has a well-defined position only when it is being observed. Position is not an intrinsic property of an electron. The wave nature of electrons is the basis for the electron microscope, invented in 1932 by Ernst Ruska in Germany. Electron wavelengths are much shorter than those of visible light.
Cold atoms promise versatile atomic chipsUsing a microelectronic chip to hold a cloud of cold atoms hovering above it, physicists in Germany may have developed an "atomic chip" that might eventually shunt Bose-Einstein condensates around an atom chip -just as electrons are shunted around a conventional silicon chip.This tiny circuit creates and manipulates a peculiar state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (p21).Previously these condensates were made using light or magnetic fields to cool and confine a gas of atoms.Electric currents travelling through wires in the atom chip create a confining magnetic field barely 1 mm wide.This field holds a cloud of 1600 rubidium atoms at a height of less than a tenth of 1 mm above the chip surface.Quantum mechanics dictates that atoms, being so small, have wavelike properties.Normally each wave bobs up and down independently.However, in a Bose-Einstein condensate all of the atomic waves are "coherent" -moving in step, in the same quantum state.Instead of behaving like a
When an atom or a molecule interacts with a light beam, the light emitted or absorbed carries valuable information about the atomic or molecular structure. This phenomenon underlies the whole field of spectroscopy. But the interaction of a photon with an atom can be used to manipulate the atom as well as to probe its structure. For example, in an approach called optical pumping, invented by Alfred Kastler, one can use the resonant exchange of angular momentum between atoms and polarized photons to align or orient the spins of atoms or to put them in nonequilibrium situations. In his original 1950 paper Kastler also proposed using optical pumping to cool and to heat the internal degrees of freedom, calling the phenomena the “effet luminofrigorique” and the “effet luminocalorique.” Another famous example of the use of photon-atom interaction to control atoms is laser cooling. This technique relies on resonant exchange of linear momentum between photons and atoms to control their external degrees of freedom and thus to reduce their kinetic energy. Laser cooling was suggested independently by Theodor Hänsch and Arthur Schawlow for neutral atoms and by David Wineland and Hans Dehmelt for trapped ions. In an article written three years ago for PHYSICS TODAY (June 1987, page 34), Wineland and Wayne Itano presented the principle of laser cooling and the potential applications of cold atoms to fields of physics such as ultrahigh resolution spectroscopy, atomic clocks, collisions, surface physics and collective quantum effects. At that time laser cooling had brought temperatures down to a few hundred microkelvin, but unexpected improvements during the last three years have dramatically lowered those temperatures to only a few microkelvin. We now feel we understand the new physical mechanisms responsible for these very low temperatures.