Realizing a stable magnetic double-well potential on an atom chip

J. Estève; T. Schumm; J.-B. Trebbia; I. Bouchoule; A. Aspect; C. I. Westbrook

doi:10.1140/epjd/e2005-00190-9

EPJ

Realizing a stable magnetic double-well potential on an atom chip

J. Estève^a, T. Schumm, J.-B. Trebbia, I. Bouchoule, A. Aspect and C. I. Westbrook

Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, 91403 Orsay Cedex, France

Received: 14 March 2005
Published online: 26 July 2005

Abstract

We discuss design considerations and the realization of a magnetic double-well potential on an atom chip using current-carrying wires. Stability requirements for the trapping potential lead to a typical size of order microns for such a device. We also present experiments using the device to manipulate cold, trapped atoms.

PACS: 39.20.+q – Atom interferometry techniques / 03.75.Lm – Tunneling, Josephson effect, Bose-Einstein condensates in periodic potentials, solitons, vortices and topological excitations