An atom mirror etched from a hard drive

Abstract

We describe the fabrication of an atom mirror by etching of a common hard drive, and we report the observation of specular retroreflection of 11 uk cesium atoms using this mirror. The atoms were trapped and cooled above the hard drive using the mirror magneto-optical trap technique, and upon release, two full bounces were detected. The hard drive atom mirror will be a useful tool for both atom optics and quantum computation.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Specular reflection of matter waves from a rough mirror

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Cold atoms in videotape micro-traps
• Proposed magneto-electrostatic ring trap for neutral atoms
• Experimental single-impulse magnetic focusing of launched cold atoms
• Double-impulse magnetic focusing of launched cold atoms
• Transport of launched cold atoms with a laser guide and pulsed magnetic fields
• Design and Characterization of a Field-Switchable Nanomagnetic Atom Mirror
• Fabrication of micro-magnetic traps for cold neutral atoms
• Van der Waals enhancement of optical atom potentials via resonant coupling to surface polaritons