Trapping of Bose-Einstein condensates in a three-dimensional dark focus generated by conical refraction

We present a novel type of three-dimensional dark focus optical trapping potential for ultra-cold atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates. This 'optical bottle' is created with blue-detuned laser light exploiting the phenomenon of conical refraction occurring in biaxial crystals. We present experiments on confining a Rb87 Bose-Einstein condensate in this potential and derive the trapping frequencies and potential barriers under the harmonic approximation and the conical refraction theory

Three level atom optics in dipole traps and waveguides

An analogy is explored between a setup of three atomic traps coupled via tunneling and an internal atomic three-level system interacting with two laser fields. Within this scenario we describe a STIRAP like process which allows to move an atom between the ground states of two trapping potentials and analyze its robustness. This analogy is extended to other robust and coherent transport schemes and to systems of more than a single atom. Finally it is applied to manipulate external degrees of freedom of atomic wave packets propagating in waveguides.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures; submitted to special issue 'Quantum Control of Light and Matter' of Optics Communication

Generation of entangled photon pairs in optical cavity-QED: Operating in the bad cavity limit

We propose an optical cavity-QED scheme for the deterministic generation of polarization entangled photon pairs that operates with high fidelity even in the bad cavity limit. The scheme is based on the interaction of an excited four-level atom with two empty optical cavity modes via an adiabatic passage process. Monte-Carlo wave function simulations are used to evaluate the fidelity of the cavity-QED source and its entanglement capability in the presence of decoherence. In the bad cavity limit, fidelities close to one are predicted for state-of-the-art experimental parameter values.Comment: 9 pages and 5 figure

Single atom edge-like states via quantum interference

We demonstrate how quantum interference may lead to the appearance of robust edge-like states of a single ultracold atom in a two-dimensional optical ribbon. We show that these states can be engineered either within the manifold of local ground states of the sites forming the ribbon, or of states carrying one unit of angular momentum. In the former case, we show that the implementation of edge-like states can be extended to other geometries, such as tilted square lattices. In the latter case, we suggest to use the winding number associated to the angular momentum as a synthetic dimension.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Interaction-induced topological properties of two bosons in flat-band systems

In flat-band systems, destructive interference leads to the localization of non-interacting particles and forbids their motion through the lattice. However, in the presence of interactions the overlap between neighbouring single-particle localized eigenstates may enable the propagation of bound pairs of particles. In this work, we show how these interaction-induced hoppings can be tuned to obtain a variety of two-body topological states. In particular, we consider two interacting bosons loaded into the orbital angular momentum $l=1$ states of a diamond-chain lattice, wherein an effective $\pi$ flux may yield a completely flat single-particle energy landscape. In the weakly-interacting limit, we derive effective single-particle models for the two-boson quasiparticles which provide an intuitive picture of how the topological states arise. By means of exact diagonalization calculations, we benchmark these states and we show that they are also present for strong interactions and away from the strict flat-band limit. Furthermore, we identify a set of doubly localized two-boson flat-band states that give rise to a special instance of Aharonov-Bohm cages for arbitrary interactions

Wave-vector and polarization dependence of conical refraction

We experimentally address the wave-vector and polarization dependence of the internal conical refraction phenomenon by demonstrating that an input light beam of elliptical transverse profile refracts into two beams after passing along one of the optic axes of a biaxial crystal, i.e. it exhibits double refraction instead of refracting conically. Such double refraction is investigated by the independent rotation of a linear polarizer and a cylindrical lens. Expressions to describe the position and the intensity pattern of the refracted beams are presented and applied to predict the intensity pattern for an axicon beam propagating along the optic axis of a biaxial crystal

Optical vault: reconfigurable bottle beam by conically refracted light

We employ conical refraction of light in a biaxial crystal to create an optical bottle for trapping and manipulation of particles. We show that by just varying the polarization of the input light the bottle can be opened and closed at will. We experimentally demonstrate stable photophoretic trapping and controllable loading and unloading of light absorbing particles in the trap.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure