Eur. Phys. J. D 28, 273-276 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2003-00309-0

Microscopic electro-optical atom trap on an evanescent-wave mirror

¹ Department of Engineering Physics and Mathematics, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 2200, 02015 HUT, Finland
² Metrology Research Institute, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 3000, 02015 HUT, Finland

Corresponding author: ^a andrej@focus.hut.fi

Received: 18 March 2003
Revised: 16 October 2003
Published online: 9 December 2003

Abstract

We put forward the idea of a surface-mounted microscopic electro-optical atom trap. The trap is formed on an evanescent-wave atom mirror by the strongly localized static electric field of two oppositely charged transparent electrodes placed close to each other. The electrodes are embedded in a refractive-index-matched thin dielectric layer on the surface of a glass prism. In our example, the phase-space density in the trap center reaches 0.1, when the trap is loaded with atoms from a gravito-optical surface trap.