Electric and magnetic mirrors and gratings for slowly moving neutral atoms and molecules

Diffraction of a Bose-Einstein Condensate from a Magnetic Lattice on a Microchip

“…The current of I = 0.2mA in each conductor is oppositely oriented for neighboring wires. This results in a periodic potential for the atoms with a sinusoidal modulation along the axial direction (long axis of the trap) and an exponential decay in the vertical direction (perpendicular to the chip surface) [15,16]. The condensate approaches the lattice during a controlled vertical oscillation inside the trap (period T=13.2 ms) and interacts with the lattice only for a short time at the turning point of the oscillation.…”

Reconstruction of a Cold Atom Cloud by Magnetic Focusing

“…1(a), but the magnitude of the magnetic field at height z takes the simple form B B 0 exp͑2kz͒. For atoms that move slowly in the field of the mirror, the magnetic quantum number is a constant of the motion, resulting in a Stern-Gerlach force that is normal to the surface [11], as illustrated in Fig. 1(b).…”

Manipulating Beams of Ultra-cold Atoms with a Static Magnetic Field

“…Considerable progress has been made in developing mirrors and beamsplitters using optical electromagnetic fields, both as free-running laser beams (Martin et al 1988;Riehle et al 1991) and as evanescent fields (Cook and Hill 1982;Balykin et al 1988;Hajnal and Opat 1989). A potentially simpler way of manipulating atoms with the electromagnetic force is to use the interaction between static inhomogeneous magnetic fields and the atomic magnetic dipole moment (Opat et al 1992). In this paper we report preliminary results from experiments on the deflection of a beam of laser cooled atoms by the inhomogeneous magnetic field of a current-carrying wire.…”