A Smooth, Inductively Coupled Ring Trap for Atoms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable, smooth ring trap for cold atoms using inductive coupling and time-averaged magnetic fields, improving potential stability and enabling advanced atom interferometry on chips.

Contribution

It presents a novel design for a stable, inductively coupled ring trap that addresses previous issues of potential roughness and wire end effects, with potential for microfabrication and atom-chip integration.

Findings

Numerical investigation confirms trap stability and smoothness.

Proposed methods reduce Majorana spin flip losses.

Potential for microfabrication and atom interferometry applications.

Abstract

We propose and numerically investigate a scalable ring trap for cold atoms that surmounts problems of roughness of the potential and end--effects of trap wires. A stable trapping potential is formed about an electrically isolated, conducting loop in an ac magnetic field by time averaging the superposition of the external and induced magnetic fields. We investigate the use of additional fields to eliminate Majorana spin flip losses and to create novel trapping geometries. The possibility of micro--fabrication of these ring traps offers the prospect of developing Sagnac atom interferometry in atom--chip devices.