Advances in Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics 

About: Advances in Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics is an academic journal published by Elsevier BV. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Ionization & Electron. It has an ISSN identifier of 1049-250X. Over the lifetime, 307 publications have been published receiving 15559 citations.

Optical Dipole Traps for Neutral Atoms

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses optical dipole traps for neutral atoms Methods for storage and trapping of charged and neutral particles have very often served as the experimental key to great scientific advances, covering physics in the vast energy range from elementary particles to ultracold atomic quantum matter It describes the basic physics of dipole trapping in fardetuned light, the typical experimental techniques and procedures, and the different trap types currently available, along with their specific features In the experiments discussed, optical dipole traps have already shown great promise for a variety of different applications Of particular importance is the trapping of atoms in the absolute internal ground state, which cannot be trapped magnetically In this state, inelastic binary collisions are completely suppressed for energetic reasons In this respect, an ultracold cesium gas represents a particularly interesting situation, because Bose–Einstein condensation seems attainable only for the absolute ground state Therefore, an optical trap may be the only way to realize a quantum-degenerate gas of Cs atoms Further, optical dipole traps can be seen as storage devices at the low end of the presently explorable energy scale Future experiments exploiting the particular advantages of these traps can reveal interesting new phenomena

Microscopic atom optics: from wires to an atom chip

Abstract: We give a comprehensive overview of the development of micro traps, from the first experiments on guiding atoms using current carrying wires in the early 1990's to the creation of a BEC on an atom chip.

Evaporative Cooling of Trapped Atoms

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the concept of evaporative cooling of trapped neutral atoms. The recent observations of Bose–Einstein condensation have shown dramatically the potential of evaporative cooling. Through evaporative cooling, phase-space density could be increased by six orders of magnitude in these experiments. In such experiments, evaporative cooling was used to reach temperature and densities that are unprecedented for trapped atoms and greatly exceeded what had been reached before by laser cooling. Laser cooling has recently broken the recoil limit in three dimensions (3D) and reached extremely cold temperatures of 3 nK in 1D. However, none of these optical sub-recoil techniques has been realized so far at high densities. The current density limitations are caused by the absorption of light, radiation trapping, and excited state collisions. An often-mentioned disadvantage of evaporative cooling is the loss of atoms. However, as discussed in the chapter, the efficiency of evaporative cooling is quite high.

Shortcuts to Adiabaticity

Abstract: Quantum adiabatic processes--that keep constant the populations in the instantaneous eigenbasis of a time-dependent Hamiltonian--are very useful to prepare and manipulate states, but take typically a long time. This is often problematic because decoherence and noise may spoil the desired final state, or because some applications require many repetitions. "Shortcuts to adiabaticity" are alternative fast processes which reproduce the same final populations, or even the same final state, as the adiabatic process in a finite, shorter time. Since adiabatic processes are ubiquitous, the shortcuts span a broad range of applications in atomic, molecular, and optical physics, such as fast transport of ions or neutral atoms, internal population control, and state preparation (for nuclear magnetic resonance or quantum information), cold atom expansions and other manipulations, cooling cycles, wavepacket splitting, and many-body state engineering or correlations microscopy. Shortcuts are also relevant to clarify fundamental questions such as a precise quantification of the third principle of thermodynamics and quantum speed limits. We review different theoretical techniques proposed to engineer the shortcuts, the experimental results, and the prospects.