A surface-patterned chip as a strong source of ultracold atoms for quantum technologies

Laser-cooled atoms are central to modern precision measurements. They are also increasingly important as an enabling technology for experimental cavity quantum electrodynamics, quantum information processing and matter–wave interferometry. Although significant progress has been made in miniaturizing atomic metrological devices, these are limited in accuracy by their use of hot atomic ensembles and buffer gases. Advances have also been made in producing portable apparatus that benefits from the advantages of atoms in the microkelvin regime. However, simplifying atomic cooling and loading using microfabrication technology has proved difficult. In this Letter we address this problem, realizing an atom chip that enables the integration of laser cooling and trapping into a compact apparatus. Our source delivers ten thousand times more atoms than previous magneto-optical traps with microfabricated optics and, for the first time, can reach sub-Doppler temperatures. Moreover, the same chip design offers a simple way to form stable optical lattices. These features, combined with simplicity of fabrication and ease of operation, make these new traps a key advance in the development of cold-atom technology for high-accuracy, portable measurement devices

Inductively guided circuits for ultracold dressed atoms

Recent progress in optics, atomic physics and material science has paved the way to study quantum effects in ultracold atomic alkali gases confined to non-trivial geometries. Multiply connected traps for cold atoms can be prepared by combining inhomogeneous distributions of DC and radio-frequency electromagnetic fields with optical fields that require complex systems for frequency control and stabilization. Here we propose a flexible and robust scheme that creates closed quasi-one-dimensional guides for ultracold atoms through the ‘dressing’ of hyperfine sublevels of the atomic ground state, where the dressing field is spatially modulated by inductive effects over a micro-engineered conducting loop. Remarkably, for commonly used atomic species (for example, 7Li and 87Rb), the guide operation relies entirely on controlling static and low-frequency fields in the regimes of radio-frequency and microwave frequencies. This novel trapping scheme can be implemented with current technology for micro-fabrication and electronic control

Recent developments in trapping and manipulation of atoms with adiabatic potentials

A combination of static and oscillating magnetic fields can be used to ‘dress’ atoms with radio-frequency (RF), or microwave, radiation. The spatial variation of these fields can be used to create an enormous variety of traps for ultra-cold atoms and quantum gases. This article reviews the type and character of these adiabatic traps and the applications which include atom interferometry and the study of low-dimensional quantum systems. We introduce the main concepts of magnetic traps leading to adiabatic dressed traps. The concept of adiabaticity is discussed in the context of the Landau–Zener model. The first bubble trap experiment is reviewed together with the method used for loading it. Experiments based on atom chips show the production of double wells and ring traps. Dressed atom traps can be evaporatively cooled with an additional RF field, and a weak RF field can be used to probe the spectroscopy of the adiabatic potentials. Several approaches to ring traps formed from adiabatic potentials are discussed, including those based on atom chips, time-averaged adiabatic potentials and induction methods. Several proposals for adiabatic lattices with dressed atoms are also reviewed

Inductive dressed ring traps for ultracold atoms

We present two novel dressed inductive ring trap geometries, ideal for atom interferometry or studies of superfluidity and well-suited to utilization in atom chip architectures. The design permits ring radii currently only accessible via near-diffraction-limited optical traps, whilst retaining the ultra-smooth magnetic potential afforded by inductive traps. One geometry offers simple parallel implementation of multiple rings, whereas the other geometry permits axial beam-splitting of the torus suitable for whole-ring atom interferometry

Magneto-optical traps on a chip using micro-fabricated gratings

We have made magneto-optical traps (MOTs) on a chip which is able to cool and trap ~108 atoms directly from a ~1cm3 thermal background of 87Rb. 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