Accelerating, guiding, and sub‐wavelength trapping of neutral atoms with tailored optical vortices

Abstract

Single neutral atom mechanics is controllable by focused, high‐intensity optical vortices. The intensity‐dependent, laser‐driven motion of the atom's active electrons subsumes to a net transfer of the orbital angular momentum of the light to the neutral atom. The ponderomotive force on these electrons translates so into an unbounded or a bounded radial drift of the atom depending on its initial kinetic energy, as set by the temperature. Appropriate combination of laser beams results in sub‐wavelength, dynamical radial traps for tweezing atoms controllably, an effect that can be exploited for atom guiding, structuring, and lithographic applications.

Dissecting Strong-Field Excitation Dynamics with Atomic-Momentum Spectroscopy

“…One of the more intriguing non-dipole effects of strong laser field is its ability to accelerate neutral atoms and molecules [16][17][18][19][20][21], with peak accelerations potentially exceeding 10 14 g [16]. This acceleration is closely connected to the strong-field excitation of high Rydberg states [22,23].…”

Probing particle-particle correlation in harmonic traps with twisted light

“…Twisted light (TL), also known as optical vortices, designates a family of highly non-homogeneous optical beams which have single or multiple phase singularities and carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), among other interesting features [1,2]. Promising applications of TL have been identified in areas such as telecommunications [3,4], quantum computing [5], nanotechnology [6][7][8], and enhanced resolution imaging [9,10], to name a few [11,12]. From a fundamental point of view, researchers seek to understand the generation, detection, and interaction of TL with matter.…”