SBIR Phase II: Atom Chips for Cold and Ultracold Matter Applications

该小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目旨在开发用于生产和操作超冷原子气体(温度为1µK)的下一代原子芯片。虽然在第一阶段开发的原子芯片只提供磁控制，但这些新的混合原子芯片将能够在磁性和光学上操纵超冷物质。这些芯片将被整合到原子芯片真空室中，使光学技术能够在紧凑的超冷物质产品中实现。在第一阶段，我们开发了硅/玻璃晶片，既可以产生近乎完美成品率的超高真空电馈线，也可以用于超冷物质的陷阱成像。在第二阶段，我们将进一步发展这项技术，将微型芯片光学元件作为载体，将光学潜力(例如由激光产生的)引入真空系统。我们的研究计划包括重新设计现有的芯片布局，以适应将阳极结合到芯片的硅区的小尺寸光学元件。为了进一步增强功能，我们将对原子芯片进行减反射涂层，并重新设计用于向芯片提供电流的连接器方案。该项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是极大地扩展可以用原子芯片真空电池实现的实验技术的数量和种类。这里最令人感兴趣的是光学技术，例如光学晶格，用于捕获和相干控制量子力学系统(例如玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体)。超冷晶格捕获原子的一个重要应用是干涉测量，它可以用来实现陀螺仪、加速计和重力仪，预计它们的灵敏度将比当前最先进的技术高一个数量级。这种设备对导航定位系统和卫星通信至关重要，因此对商业和国防市场都非常感兴趣。光学俘获对下一代中性原子钟也是至关重要的，它的精度现在超过了10^17的惊人的1分之1(即每30亿年损失1秒)。光学囚禁原子也是实现量子信息算法的理想选择，因此在新兴的量子计算和信息处理领域有许多应用。对于基础科学，光学晶格已被用于基本常量的精确测量，一些最严格的物理标准模型测试，以及多体物理的开创性研究。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to develop the next generation of atom chips for producing and manipulating ultracold atomic gases (temperatures 1 µK). While atom chips developed in Phase I provided only magnetic control, these new hybrid atom chips will be able to manipulate ultracold matter both magnetically and optically. These chips will be incorporated into atom-chip vacuum cells, allowing optical techniques to be implemented in compact ultracold matter products. In Phase I, we developed silicon/glass wafers for both creating ultrahigh vacuum electrical feedthroughs with near perfect yield as well as in-trap imaging of ultracold matter. In Phase II, we will further develop this technology by incorporating miniature on-chip optical elements as a vehicle for bringing optical potentials (e.g. produced by laser beams) into the vacuum system. Our research plan includes redesigning existing chip layouts to accommodate small-sized optics that will be anodically bonded to silicon regions of the chip. To further enhance functionality, we will pursue both anti-reflection coating of atom chips and redesigns of the connectorization scheme used to bring electrical currents to the chip.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to greatly expand the number and variety of experimental techniques that can be implemented with atom-chip vacuum cells. Of key interest here are optical techniques, such as optical lattices, used to trap and coherently control quantum mechanical systems (e.g. Bose-Einstein condensates). An important application of ultracold lattice-trapped atoms is interferometry, which can be used to realize gyroscopes, accelerometers, and gravimeters that are expected to be orders of magnitude more sensitive than current state-of-the-art technologies. Such devices are crucial for navigational positioning systems and satellite communications, and therefore are of great interest to both commercial and defense-oriented markets. Optical trapping is also vital for the next generation of neutral atomic clocks, whose accuracy is now exceeding a phenomenal 1 part in 10^17 (i.e. a loss of 1 second every 3 billion years). Optically trapped atoms are also ideal for implementing quantum information algorithms, and therefore have many applications in the emerging fields of quantum computation and information processing. For basic science, optical lattices have been used for precision measurements of fundamental constants, some of the most stringent tests of the Standard Model of Physics, and groundbreaking studies of many-body physics.