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arXiv:physics/0112021 · Physical Review A

Atomic diffraction from nanostructured optical potentials

Gaëtan Lévêque, C. Meier, Renaud Mathevet, C. Mennerat-Robilliard, J. Weiner, Christian Girard, Jean‐Claude Weeber

Published May 9, 2002• 10 citations
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Abstract

We develop a versatile theoretical approach to the study of ultracold atom diffractive scattering from light-field gratings by combining calculations of the optical near field generated by evanescent waves close to the surface of periodic nanostructured arrays with atom wavepacket propagation techniques. Nanometric one dimensional (1D) and 2D arrays with subwavelength periodicity deposited on a transparent surface and optically coupled to an evanescent wave source exhibit intensity and polarization gradients on the length scale of the object and can produce strong near-field periodic modulation in the optical potential above the structure. As a specific and experimentally practical example we calculate the diffraction of cold Cs atoms dropped onto a periodic optical potential crafted from a 2D nanostructure array. For an ``out-of-plane'' configuration we calculate a wide diffraction angle $(\ensuremath{\simeq}2\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{})$ and about $60%$ of the initial atom flux in diffraction orders $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1,$ an encouraging result for future experiments.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.65.053615

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In this article we illustrate important characteristics of the diffraction of cold atoms from periodic light potentials generated from coupling a light wave to dielectric nanostructures. We apply a recently developed theoretical approach to investigate the behavior of Cs atoms dropped onto a periodically modulated optical dipole potential where the period of the modulation is controlled by the periodicity of the dielectric array. These nanostructures take the form of one-dimensional line gratings or two-dimensional point gratings. We discuss several important parameters critical to the successful realisation of laboratory experiments and future atom-optical instrumentation using this new kind of atomic diffraction medium.
Ultracold atom-traps on a chip enhances the practical application of atom traps in quantum information processing, sensing, and metrology. Plasmon mediated near-field optical potentials are promising for trapping atoms. The combination of plasmonic nanostructures and ultracold atoms has the potential to create a two dimensional array of neutral atoms with lattice spacing smaller than that of lattices created from interfering light fields -- the optical lattices. We report the design, fabrication and characterization of a nano-scale array of near-field optical traps for neutral atoms using plasmonic nanostructures. The building block of the array is a metallic nano-disc fabricated on the surface of an ITO-coated glass substrate. We numerically simulate the electromagnetic field-distribution using Finite Difference Time Domain method around the nanodisc, and calculate the intensity, optical potential and the dipole force for 87^{87}87Rb atoms. The optical near-field generated from the fabricated nanostructures is experimentally characterized by using Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopy. We find that the optical potential and dipole force has all the desired characteristics to trap cold atoms when a blue-detuned light-field is used to excite the nanostructures. This trap can be used for effective trapping and manipulation of isolated atoms and also for creating a lattice of neutral atoms having sub-optical wavelength lattice spacing. Near-field measurements are affected by the influence of tip on the sub-wavelength structure. We present a deconvolution method to extract the actual near-field profile from the measured data.
We present a method to create a blazed atomic diffraction grating by use of a periodical optical potential. Like its optical counterpart, the blazed atomic diffraction grating distributes intensity into a specific nonzero diffraction order. Total internal reflection of a laser beam coupled to the nanostructured surface of a prism results in transverse modulation of the intensity responsible for atomic diffraction. For specific illumination parameters and periodicity of the pattern, the long-range potential interacting with the atoms has an asymmetric sawtooth shape. Analytic and numerical calculations show that population diffracted in the +1 order can be optimized to approximately 55%, with almost no population into the -1 order.
Realization of the analogues of optical components for the manipulation of atomic de Broglie waves has recently become possible through the use of laser-based techniques. The strong fields generated by laser light have already been used to reflect atoms using travelling evanescent waves, and to diffract atomic beams through small angles using transmission gratings formed by a standing laser light wave in vacuo. Present experiments aim to combine these techniques to produce a reflection diffraction grating formed by a standing evanescent laser-light field, and to exploit the larger diffraction angles made possible theoretically by such a scheme.
We propose a scheme to tailor nanostructured trapping potentials for ultracold atoms. Our trapping scheme combines an engineered extension of repulsive optical dipole forces at short distances and attractive Casimir-Polder forces at long distances between an atom and a nanostructured surface. This extended dipole force scheme takes advantage of excited-state dressing by plasmonically-enhanced optical fields to doubly dress the ground state and create a strongly repulsive potential with spatially tunable characteristics. In this paper, we show that, under realistic experimental conditions, this method can be used to trap Rubidium atoms close to surfaces (tens of nanometers). The influence of the various losses and heating rate mechanism in such traps is characterized. As an example we present a near-field optical lattice with subwavelength period (100 nm) and study the tunability of lattice and trapping depths. Such lattices can enhance energy scales with interesting perspectives for the simulation of strongly-correlated physics. Our method can be extended to other atomic species and to other cold atom near-field hybrid systems.
When cold atoms approach a periodically magnetized surface, they are scattered by the effective repulsive potential $U(x,y)={\ensuremath{\mu}}_{B}{m}_{F}gB(x,y)$. If the period aaa of the magnetized surface is larger than the de Broglie wavelength $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ of the atoms, the atoms are diffracted. We have developed a method for calculating the location and intensity of the diffraction peaks using formal scattering theory. We solve the exact two-dimensional Schr\"odinger equation with the finite element method and calculate the scattering amplitude $f(\ensuremath{\phi})$ using the integral formula; a plot of $\ensuremath{\mid}f(\ensuremath{\phi}){\ensuremath{\mid}}^{2}$ provides a visualization of the diffraction pattern. By varying the experimental parameters within a realistic range, we predict the optimal conditions for observing atom diffraction.