Comparative simulations of Fresnel holography methods for atomic waveguides

TL;DR

This paper compares Fresnel zone plates and spatial light modulators for creating light potentials to trap atoms, finding that micro-fabricated FZPs outperform SLMs in accuracy and offer promising static trapping applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates that binary Fresnel zone plates with sub-wavelength resolution outperform traditional SLMs in atom trapping applications, highlighting their potential for static cold-atom traps.

Findings

FZPs outperform SLMs in root mean square error for complex patterns

Binary FZPs with 1 μm wavelength resolution are highly effective

FZPs enable static, high-precision atom trapping potentials

Abstract

We have simulated the optical properties of micro-fabricated Fresnel zone plates (FZPs) as an alternative to spatial light modulators (SLMs) for producing non-trivial light potentials to trap atoms within a lensless Fresnel arrangement. We show that binary (1-bit) FZPs with wavelength (1 \mu m) spatial resolution consistently outperform kinoforms of spatial and phase resolution comparable to commercial SLMs in root mean square error comparisons, with FZP kinoforms demonstrating increasing improvement for complex target intensity distributions. Moreover, as sub-wavelength resolution microfabrication is possible, FZPs provide an exciting possibility for the creation of static cold-atom trapping potentials useful to atomtronics, interferometry, and the study of fundamental physics.