February 2018
Spotlight Summary by Adam Selyem
Radiation pressure on a two-level atom: an exact analytical approach
Since their invention in the 1980s, cold atom traps have become an exciting tool to study regimes of physics which were previously thought to be experimentally unrealizable, such as Bose-Einstein condensates. They are used in various sensing applications ranging from gravity mapping to magnetometry. They also offer high-capacity quantum information storage, essential to the realization of quantum communication networks and quantum computers.
Several atom trapping schemes are known, but the use of laser beams to exert a force on a cloud of atoms is common to all of them. Trap configurations can be tailored to applications by using different numbers of light beams of varying intensity impinging on the atoms from different directions. While the action of a single laser beam on a single atom is quite straightforward to calculate, an analytical method to find the effect of several light fields with various frequencies, intensities, and directions has proven elusive, forcing researchers to use numerical methods to investigate new trapping configurations. In this paper, Podlecki et al. present a rather elegant analytical formula for calculating the action of any number of laser beams, solving this problem. They arrive to an expression of a form familiar to physicists working with cold atoms by finding a new expression for the well-known saturation parameter. This result could lead to novel trapping configurations, an exciting prospect for the development of numerous technologies.
You must log in to add comments.
Several atom trapping schemes are known, but the use of laser beams to exert a force on a cloud of atoms is common to all of them. Trap configurations can be tailored to applications by using different numbers of light beams of varying intensity impinging on the atoms from different directions. While the action of a single laser beam on a single atom is quite straightforward to calculate, an analytical method to find the effect of several light fields with various frequencies, intensities, and directions has proven elusive, forcing researchers to use numerical methods to investigate new trapping configurations. In this paper, Podlecki et al. present a rather elegant analytical formula for calculating the action of any number of laser beams, solving this problem. They arrive to an expression of a form familiar to physicists working with cold atoms by finding a new expression for the well-known saturation parameter. This result could lead to novel trapping configurations, an exciting prospect for the development of numerous technologies.
Add Comment
You must log in to add comments.
Article Information
Radiation pressure on a two-level atom: an exact analytical approach
L. Podlecki, R. D. Glover, J. Martin, and T. Bastin
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 35(1) 127-132 (2018) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF