Transport of ultracold atoms between concentric traps via spatial adiabatic passage

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of spatial adiabatic passage techniques, analogous to RAP and STIRAP, for transporting ultracold atoms between concentric ring traps with high fidelity and robustness, supported by numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces matter-wave analogues of RAP and STIRAP for ultracold atoms in concentric traps, providing models and simulations demonstrating effective atom transport.

Findings

High-fidelity atom loading into a ring potential achieved.

Efficient atom transport between rings demonstrated.

Models agree well with numerical simulations.

Abstract

Spatial adiabatic passage processes for ultracold atoms trapped in tunnel-coupled cylindrically symmetric concentric potentials are investigated. Specifically, we discuss the matter-wave analogue of the rapid adiabatic passage (RAP) technique for a high fidelity and robust loading of a single atom into a harmonic ring potential from a harmonic trap, and for its transport between two concentric rings. We also consider a system of three concentric rings and investigate the transport of a single atom between the innermost and the outermost rings making use of the matter-wave analogue of the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique. We describe the RAP-like and STIRAP-like dynamics by means of a two- and a three-state models, respectively, obtaining good agreement with the numerical simulations of the corresponding two-dimensional Schr\"odinger equation.