An on-chip optical lattice for cold atom experiments

TL;DR

This paper introduces an integrated on-chip optical lattice system for cold atom experiments, combining atom-chip technology with optical lattices to enable compact, robust setups capable of advanced quantum manipulations.

Contribution

It presents a novel integrated optical lattice system directly bonded to an atom chip, facilitating scalable and stable cold atom experiments with demonstrated tunneling.

Findings

Achieved Bose-Einstein condensation in a magnetic chip trap

Loaded atoms into a vertically oriented 1D optical lattice

Demonstrated Landau-Zener tunneling in the system

Abstract

An atom-chip-based integrated optical lattice system for cold and ultracold atom applications is presented. The retro-reflection optics necessary for forming the lattice are bonded directly to the atom chip, enabling a compact and robust on-chip optical lattice system. After achieving Bose-Einstein condensation in a magnetic chip trap, we load atoms directly into a vertically oriented 1D optical lattice and demonstrate Landau-Zener tunneling. The atom chip technology presented here can be readily extended to higher dimensional optical lattices.