Low-SWaP Magneto-optical Trap using both Planar Optical and Magnetic Components

TL;DR

This paper presents a compact, low-SWaP magneto-optical trap that integrates planar optical and magnetic components, significantly reducing size, weight, and power while maintaining high trapping performance for cold atom systems.

Contribution

The authors introduce a fully planar, integrated magneto-optical trap using metasurfaces and planar coils, enabling scalable and energy-efficient cold atom platforms.

Findings

Nearly an order-of-magnitude improvement in trapping performance.

Significant reductions in size, weight, and power consumption.

Successful operation with 87Rb atoms using the integrated system.

Abstract

Compact, lightweight, and energy-efficient cold atom systems are crucial for advancing quantum technologies, yet their realization remains constrained by the bulky optical and magnetic components required in current atom trapping architectures. Here, we demonstrate a low-SWaP magneto-optical trap that seamlessly integrates planar optical and magnetic components into a unified platform. A monolithic dual-functional metasurface simultaneously polarized and shapes the cooling beam, replacing traditional lens-waveplate assemblies and converting a linearly polarized Gaussian beam into a circularly polarized flat-top beam. In parallel, a planar coil chip substitutes bulky anti-Helmholtz cols and generated the required quadrupole magnetic field with drastically reduced power consumption. Under D2 line cooling of 87Rb atoms, the fully planar system delivers nearly an order-of-magnitude improvement in trapping performance while operating at a fraction of the size, weight, and power of traditional systems. This compact, bulky-component-free approach offers a scalable, energy-efficient pathway toward chip-scale cold atom platforms.