Enhancement of specular behavior in atom mirrors with quadrupole-active transitions

Abstract

Modern studies have confirmed the possibility of making atomic mirrors using quadrupole-active atomic transition evanescent waves. The reflection process has been shown to be enhanced to approach specular behavior in several ways. In this study, we considered the atomic mirror due to the optical quadrupole potential generated by two counter-propagating optical Gaussian beams. This arrangement provides good enhancement for the evanescent field in the vacuum above the surface, which can be used as an atomic mirror. A high-quality atomic mirror should reflect the atoms specularly while maintaining the coherence of the de Broglie wave function. We focused on a particular atomic transition in Cs, which is a dipole-forbidden but quadrupole-allowed transition. We illustrate the optical quadrupole potential and suggest that quadrupolar transitions generally ignored in atom optics exist for exploitation. This study investigated the conditions facilitating atomic mirrors using typical experimentally accessible parameters.