Fabrication of an atom chip for Rydberg atom-metal surface interaction studies

TL;DR

This paper reports the fabrication of an atom chip designed to study interactions between Rydberg atoms and a gold surface, enabling precise control of atom-surface distances for experimental investigations.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel atom chip with integrated gold surface and optimized fabrication techniques for Rydberg atom-surface interaction research.

Findings

Successful fabrication of a microstructured atom chip with gold surface

Precise control of atom-surface distance for Rydberg excitation

Enhanced surface quality for interaction studies

Abstract

An atom chip has been fabricated for the study of interactions between $^{87}$Rb Rydberg atoms and a Au surface. The chip tightly confines cold atoms by generating high magnetic field gradients using microfabricated current-carrying wires. These trapped atoms may be excited to Rydberg states at well-defined atom-surface distances. For the purpose of Rydberg atom-surface interaction studies, the chip has a thermally evaporated Au surface layer, separated from the underlying trapping wires by a planarizing polyimide dielectric. Special attention was paid to the edge roughness of the trapping wires, the planarization of the polyimide, and the grain structure of the Au surface.