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Miniature atom bottle traps enabled by chiral doughnut light

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posted on 2023-07-21, 09:15 authored by Jun Yuan, Koray Köksal, Vassilis Lembessis, Mohamed Babiker
A novel optical set-up which enables cold atoms to be trapped in a finite set of miniature (sub-wavelength) bottle traps is highlighted. These bottle traps are formed when the atoms interact with a tightly focused standing wave due to two-counter propagating optical vortex beams possessing the same winding number $\ell=\pm1$ and the same circular polarization ($\sigma=\mp 1)$. Tight focusing generates strong longitudinal field components which become responsible for an on-axis standing wave. The resulting optical potential leads to the axial confinement of far blue-detuned atoms. This completes the formation of the bottle trap, since the off-axis radial confinement is, as usual, provided by the optical potential due to the interference of the transverse components of the light. The main characteristics of the bottle traps are illustrated using typical experimentally-accessible parameters. Due to the spin-orbit coupling the trap parameters are tunable by changing the ellipicity of the light.

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Funder Name

University of York

Preprint ID

107626

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