Magneto-optical Trapping through a Transparent Silicon Carbide Atom Chip

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel magneto-optical trapping method using a transparent silicon carbide atom chip, enabling efficient atom trapping and detection through the chip with potential applications in quantum technologies.

Contribution

The work introduces a transparent silicon carbide atom chip for magneto-optical trapping, addressing birefringence issues and enabling detection through the chip, which is a new approach in atom chip technology.

Findings

Successfully trapped about 100 million rubidium atoms.

Achieved atom trapping at arbitrary distances from the chip.

Demonstrated detection of atoms through the chip with large numerical aperture.

Abstract

We demonstrate the possibility of trapping about one hundred million rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap with several of the beams passing through a transparent atom chip mounted on a vacuum cell wall. The chip is made of a gold microcircuit deposited on a silicon carbide substrate, with favorable thermal conductivity. We show how a retro-reflected configuration can efficiently address the chip birefringence issues, allowing atom trapping at arbitrary distances from the chip. We also demonstrate detection through the chip, granting a large numerical aperture. This configuration is compared to other atom chip devices, and some possible applications are discussed.