Ron Folman

Microscopic Atom Optics: From Wires to an Atom Chip

We give a comprehensive overview of the development of micro traps, from the first experiments on guiding atoms using current carrying wires in the early 1990s to the creation of a BEC on an atom chip.

Beam splitter for guided atoms

We have designed and experimentally studied a simple beam splitter for atoms guided on an Atom Chip, using a current carrying Y-shaped wire and a bias magnetic field. This beam splitter and other similar designs can be used to build atom optical elements on the mesoscopic scale, and integrate them in matterwave quantum circuits. PACS numbers: 03.75.Be, 03.65.Nk Typeset using REVTEX

Multimode Interferometer for Guided Matter Waves

Atoms can be trapped and guided with electromagnetic fields, using nanofabricated structures. We describe the fundamental features of an interferometer for guided matter waves, built of two combined Y-shaped beam splitters. We find that such a device is expected to exhibit high contrast fringes even in a multimode regime, analogous to a white light interferometer.

Possibility of single-atom detection on a chip

We investigate the optical detection of single atoms held in a microscopic atom trap close to a surface. Laser light is guided by optical fibers or optical microstructures via the atom to a photodetector. Our results suggest that with present-day technology microcavities can be built around the atom with sufficiently high finesse to permit unambiguous detection of a single atom in the trap with 10 µs of integration. We compare resonant and nonresonant detection schemes and discuss the requirements for detecting an atom without causing it to undergo spontaneous emission.

Trapping and manipulating neutral atoms with electrostatic fields

We report on experiments with cold thermal (7)Li atoms confined in combined magnetic and electric potentials. A novel type of three-dimensional trap was formed by modulating a magnetic guide using electrostatic fields. We observed atoms trapped in a string of up to six individual such traps, a controlled transport of an atomic cloud over a distance of 400 microm, and a dynamic splitting of a single trap into a double well potential. Applications for quantum information processing are discussed.

Bose-Einstein condensation in a simple microtrap

A Bose-Einstein condensate is created in a simple and robust miniature Ioffe-Pritchard trap, the so-called Z trap. This trap results from the mere combination of a Z-shaped current-carrying wire and a homogeneous bias field. The experimental procedure allows condensation of typically

Optimized magneto-optical trap for experiments with ultracold atoms near surfaces

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Atom fiber for omnidirectional guiding of cold neutral atoms.

{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}

Bose|[ndash]|Einstein condensates: Mastering the language of atoms

atoms in the