Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 30: Poster II
Q 30.21: Poster
Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 16:30–19:00, VMP 9 Poster
A two-colour dipole trap for neutral Caesium atoms based on ultra-thin optical fibres — •Daniel Reitz, Eugen Vetsch, Guillem Sagué, Regine Schmidt, and Arno Rauschenbeutel — Abteilung QUANTUM, Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz
We present our experimental setup which allows us to trap more than 103 cold neutral Caesium atoms close to the surface of an ultra-thin optical fibre for about 50 ms. The atoms are first captured by a standard three dimensional magneto-optical-trap and then directly loaded into our two-colour dipole trap, which is created by the evanescent fields of two laser beams co-propagating through the fibre. The trap lasers at 1064 nm and 780 nm are far detuned and have a total power of about 40 mW, resulting in trapping potential of a few hundred µK. In order to detect the atoms in the trap, we measure the transmission of a weak resonant probe beam of 1 pW launched through the fibre. Each atom absorbs a few percent of this probe beam via evanescent field coupling so that the overall ensemble of atoms is optically dense for the probe. This paves the way towards the realisation of fibre-coupled atom-light-interfaces for quantum communication applications.
Financial support of the Volkswagen Foundation and the ESF is gratefully acknowledged.