Trapping cold atoms near carbon nanotubes: thermal spin flips and Casimir-Polder potential

Abstract

We investigate the possibility to trap ultracold atoms near the outside of a metallic carbon nanotube (CN) which we imagine to use as a miniaturized current-carrying wire. We calculate atomic spin flip lifetimes and compare the strength of the Casimir-Polder potential with the magnetic trapping potential. Our analysis indicates that the Casimir-Polder force is the dominant loss mechanism and we compute the minimum distance to the carbon nanotube at which an atom can be trapped.

8 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force
• The van der Waals energy of atomic systems near absorbing and dispersing bodies
• Spontaneous decay dynamics in atomically doped carbon nanotubes
• Nanoscale atomic waveguides with suspended carbon nanotubes

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Trapping cold atoms using surface-grown carbon nanotubes
• Dipole-dipole Interactions Through a Lens
• Electro-Optical Nanotraps for Neutral Atoms