An on-chip optical lattice for cold atom experiments

Abstract

An atom-chip-based integrated optical lattice system for cold and ultracold atom applications is presented. The retro-reflection optics necessary for forming the lattice are bonded directly to the atom chip, enabling a compact and robust on-chip optical lattice system. After achieving Bose-Einstein condensation in a magnetic chip trap, we load atoms directly into a vertically oriented 1D optical lattice and demonstrate Landau-Zener tunneling. The atom chip technology presented here can be readily extended to higher dimensional optical lattices.

4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Optics Letters

References in corpus (2)

• Strong atom-field coupling for Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical cavity on a chip
• Radio-frequency dressed state potentials for neutral atoms