Bose-Einstein condensation on a microelectronic chip
Bose-Einstein condensation on a microelectronic chip
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DOI：
10.1038/35097032
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发表时间：
2001-10-04
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Reichel, J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hänsel, W;Hommelhoff, P;Reichel, J
尽管超冷原子的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体(1-3)已经在实验上实现了几年，但它们的形成和操作仍然带来了相当大的技术挑战。最近报道了一种能够更快地产生玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体的全光学技术(4)。在这里，我们证明了凝聚体的形成可以大大简化使用芯片上的微型磁陷(5)。我们在短短700毫秒的时间内，在磁光陷阱的单个蒸汽室内实现了玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚--比典型的实验快10倍以上，比全光技术快3倍(4)。当被捕获的原子自由落体时，凝聚体垂直于芯片表面发射出相干物质波；或者，我们将凝聚体耦合到一条原子传送带(6)中，该传送带用于在与芯片表面平行的宏观距离上无损地传输凝聚云。用这种集成的原子-光学系统操控类似激光的相干物质波的可能性在干涉术、全息术、显微镜、原子光刻和量子信息处理中有着广阔的应用前景。
Although Bose-Einstein condensates(1-3) of ultracold atoms have been experimentally realizable for several years, their formation and manipulation still impose considerable technical challenges. An all-optical technique(4) that enables faster production of Bose-Einstein condensates was recently reported. Here we demonstrate that the formation of a condensate can be greatly simplified using a microscopic magnetic trap on a chip(5). We achieve Bose-Einstein condensation inside the single vapour cell of a magneto-optical trap in as little as 700 ms-more than a factor of ten faster than typical experiments, and a factor of three faster than the all-optical technique(4). A coherent matter wave is emitted normal to the chip surface when the trapped atoms are released into free fall; alternatively, we couple the condensate into an 'atomic conveyor belt'(6), which is used to transport the condensed cloud nondestructively over a macroscopic distance parallel to the chip surface. The possibility of manipulating laser-like coherent matter waves with such an integrated atom-optical system holds promise for applications in interferometry, holography, microscopy, atom lithography and quantum information processing(7).