A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source

Hendrik Heine; Aidan S. Arnold; Melanie S. Le Gonidec; Paul F. Griffin; Erling Riis; Waldemar Herr; Ernst M. Rasel

doi:10.1088/1367-2630/adbc14

A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source

Hendrik Heine^*, Aidan S. Arnold, Melanie S. Le Gonidec, Paul F. Griffin, Erling Riis, Waldemar Herr, Ernst M. Rasel

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Diffraction gratings have simplified the optical implementation of magneto-optical traps (MOTs) to require only a single input beam, however reaching high atom number and fast loading has proven to be a challenge. We equipped an atom chip with a grating surface and paired it with a velocity-tunable 2D+-MOT as an atomic source to facilitate efficient loading together with magnetic trapping. Using uniform grating illumination, we magneto-optically trap 1.0(1)×109 atoms within one second, cool them to 14.1(3)μK, and transfer a quarter of them into the magnetic chip trap. This is a key step towards simple portable quantum sensors employing (ultra-)cold atoms.

Original language	English
Article number	033019
Number of pages	8
Journal	New Journal of Physics
Volume	27
Issue number	3
Early online date	14 Mar 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/adbc14
Publication status	Published - 14 Mar 2025

Funding

We acknowledge support by the German Space Agency (DLR) with funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) due to an enactment of the German Bundestag under Grant Nos. DLR 50WM1650 (KACTUS), 50WM1947(KACTUSII) and 50RK1976 (QCHIP). We have been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC-2123 QuantumFrontiers- 390837967 and Project-ID 434617780- SFB 1464 TerraQ. We acknowledge financial support from ‘Niedersächsisches Vorab’ through ‘Förderung von Wissenschaft und Technik in Forschung und Lehre’ for the initial funding of research in the new DLR-SI Institute and through the ‘Quantum- and Nano-Metrology (QUANOMET)’ initiative within the Project QT3. We acknowledge financial support from ‘QVLS-Q1’ through the VW foundation and the ministry for science and culture of Lower Saxony. Funding is appreciated from the European Space Agency (ESA) under the TRP programme, Contract No. 4000126331. We thank Maral Siercke, Amado Bautista and the group of Christian Ospelkaus for the production of parts of the atom chip assembly. ASA, PFG, and ER acknowledge support through the UK EPSRC Grant EP/T001046/1, and Kelvin Nanotechnology for valuable conversations regarding integrated chip design.

Keywords

GMOT
atomchip
tophat beam
atom interferometer

Access to Document

10.1088/1367-2630/adbc14Licence: CC BY 4.0

Heine-etal-NJP-2025-A-compact-high-flux-grating-chip-cold-atom-sourceFinal published version, 749 KBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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title = "A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source",

abstract = "Diffraction gratings have simplified the optical implementation of magneto-optical traps (MOTs) to require only a single input beam, however reaching high atom number and fast loading has proven to be a challenge. We equipped an atom chip with a grating surface and paired it with a velocity-tunable 2D+-MOT as an atomic source to facilitate efficient loading together with magnetic trapping. Using uniform grating illumination, we magneto-optically trap 1.0(1)×109 atoms within one second, cool them to 14.1(3)μK, and transfer a quarter of them into the magnetic chip trap. This is a key step towards simple portable quantum sensors employing (ultra-)cold atoms.",

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T1 - A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source

AU - Heine, Hendrik

AU - Arnold, Aidan S.

AU - Le Gonidec, Melanie S.

AU - Griffin, Paul F.

AU - Riis, Erling

AU - Herr, Waldemar

AU - Rasel, Ernst M.

PY - 2025/3/14

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N2 - Diffraction gratings have simplified the optical implementation of magneto-optical traps (MOTs) to require only a single input beam, however reaching high atom number and fast loading has proven to be a challenge. We equipped an atom chip with a grating surface and paired it with a velocity-tunable 2D+-MOT as an atomic source to facilitate efficient loading together with magnetic trapping. Using uniform grating illumination, we magneto-optically trap 1.0(1)×109 atoms within one second, cool them to 14.1(3)μK, and transfer a quarter of them into the magnetic chip trap. This is a key step towards simple portable quantum sensors employing (ultra-)cold atoms.

AB - Diffraction gratings have simplified the optical implementation of magneto-optical traps (MOTs) to require only a single input beam, however reaching high atom number and fast loading has proven to be a challenge. We equipped an atom chip with a grating surface and paired it with a velocity-tunable 2D+-MOT as an atomic source to facilitate efficient loading together with magnetic trapping. Using uniform grating illumination, we magneto-optically trap 1.0(1)×109 atoms within one second, cool them to 14.1(3)μK, and transfer a quarter of them into the magnetic chip trap. This is a key step towards simple portable quantum sensors employing (ultra-)cold atoms.

KW - GMOT

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KW - tophat beam

KW - atom interferometer

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ER -

A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source

Abstract

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UK National Quantum Technology Hub in Sensing and Timing

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A compact high-flux grating chip cold atom source

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

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UK National Quantum Technology Hub in Sensing and Timing

Cite this