A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source

Tools

Heine, Hendrik and Arnold, Aidan S. and Le Gonidec, Melanie S. and Griffin, Paul F. and Riis, Erling and Herr, Waldemar and Rasel, Ernst M. (2025) A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source. New Journal of Physics, 27 (3). 033019. ISSN 1367-2630 (https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/adbc14)

[thumbnail of Heine-etal-NJP-2025-A-compact-high-flux-grating-chip-cold-atom-source]
Preview
 Text. Filename: Heine-etal-NJP-2025-A-compact-high-flux-grating-chip-cold-atom-source.pdf
Final Published Version
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 logo
Download (767kB)| Preview

Abstract

Diffraction gratings have simplified the optical implementation of magneto-optical traps (MOTs) to require only a single input beam, however reaching high atom number and fast loading has proven to be a challenge. We equipped an atom chip with a grating surface and paired it with a velocity-tunable 2D+-MOT as an atomic source to facilitate efficient loading together with magnetic trapping. Using uniform grating illumination, we magneto-optically trap 1.0(1)×109 atoms within one second, cool them to 14.1(3)μK, and transfer a quarter of them into the magnetic chip trap. This is a key step towards simple portable quantum sensors employing (ultra-)cold atoms.

ORCID iDs

Heine, Hendrik, Arnold, Aidan S. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7084-6958, Le Gonidec, Melanie S., Griffin, Paul F. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0134-7554, Riis, Erling ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3225-5302, Herr, Waldemar and Rasel, Ernst M.;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)