Speaker
Description
Optical trapping has transformed our ability to manipulate and control atoms and micro/nanoparticles, offering numerous applications and research directions across a wide range of scientific fields. From biological cells and colloidal microparticles to nanoparticles and cold atoms, the manipulation of single particles using optical tweezers has provided us with invaluable insights. One promising alternative to the conventional optical tweezers lies in the use of optical nanofibres - ultrathin fibres with a diameter smaller than the wavelength of light they are designed to guide. Such nanofibres confine light very tightly in the radially direction, creating an high intensity evanescent field beyond their glass boundary.
Advantageously, setups involving optical nanofibres tend to be simple and have a very small footprint, leading to “lab-on-chip” type applications. Within cold atom setups, they minimally disturb the magneto-optical trapping fields and provide an efficient data communication channel for directly sending or collecting light even down to the single photon level. With their strongly confined light fields, long interaction lengths, and low loss, nanofibres are excellent platforms for exploring phenomena like chiral atom-light interactions and waveguide quantum electrodynamics.
In our work, we have shown how Rydberg atom excitation can be mediated via an optical nanofibre, significantly reducing the power needed for the excitation to occur. We have also proposed trapping schemes for cold ground state and Rydberg state atoms by exploiting the evanescent field from optical nanofibres and combining it with a holographic tweezers configuration to create a hybrid atom trap platform. We will discuss our recent progresses, and also the limitations of this platform, during the talk.
