Laser tweezers for atomic solitons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a laser tweezers technique that locally modifies atomic interactions in Bose-Einstein condensates, enabling precise control and transport of atomic solitons for quantum state engineering.

Contribution

It presents a novel method using laser beams to control nonlinear interactions in BECs, enhancing manipulation capabilities over traditional optical trapping methods.

Findings

Numerical simulations show control over atom emission based on beam parameters.

Different configurations, including moving beams, are analyzed.

The method improves the controllability of soliton outcoupling.

Abstract

We describe a controllable and precise laser tweezers for Bose-Einstein condensates of ultracold atomic gases. In our configuration, a laser beam is used to locally modify the sign of the scattering length in the vicinity of a trapped BEC. The induced attractive interactions between atoms allow to extract and transport a controllable number of atoms. We analyze, through numerical simulations, the number of emitted atoms as a function of the width and intensity of the outcoupling beam. We also study different configurations of our system, as the use of moving beams. The main advantage of using the control laser beam to modify the nonlinear interactions in comparison to the usual way of inducing optical forces, i.e. through linear trapping potentials, is to improve the controllability of the outcoupled solitary wave-packet, which opens new possibilities for engineering macroscopic quantum states.