An optical elevator for precise delivery of cold atoms using an acousto-optical deflector

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for fast, precise delivery of ultracold atoms to a microscopic device using an acousto-optical deflector to move a single optical dipole trap, achieving high efficiency and minimal heating.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a simple, efficient technique for transporting large ultracold atom clouds over 1 cm within 100 ms with minimal heating and high accuracy, suitable for quantum device integration.

Findings

Transport of up to 1 million atoms within 100 ms over 1 cm.

Achieved transport efficiency above 95%.

Minimized residual sloshing motion with a secondary guiding beam.

Abstract

We implement a simple method for fast and precise delivery of ultracold atoms to a microscopic device, i.e. a Fabry-Perot microcavity. By moving a single beam optical dipole trap in a direction perpendicular to the beam axis with an acousto-optical deflector, we transport up to 1 million atoms within 100$\,$ms over $1\,$cm. Under these conditions, a transport efficiency above $95\%$ is achieved with only minimal heating. The atomic cloud is accurately positioned within the microcavity and transferred into an intra-cavity optical lattice. With the addition of a secondary guiding beam, we show how residual sloshing motion along the shallow axis of the trap can be minimized.