A single structured light beam as an atomic cloud splitter

Abstract

We propose a scheme to split a cloud of cold non-interacting neutral atoms based on their dipole interaction with a single structured light beam which exhibits parabolic cylindrical symmetry. Using semiclassical numerical simulations, we establish a direct relationship between the general properties of the light beam and the relevant geometric and kinematic properties acquired by the atomic cloud as its passes through the beam.

10 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Collapses and revivals of stored orbital angular momentum of light in a cold atomic ensemble
• Transporting, splitting and merging of atomic ensembles in a chip trap
• Dynamical constants for electromagnetic fields with elliptic-cylindrical symmetry
• Dynamical constants of structured photons with parabolic-cylindrical symmetry