Abstract
Arrays of trapped atoms are the ideal starting points for developing registers comprising large numbers of physical qubits for storing and processing quantum information. One very promising approach involves neutral atom traps produced on microfabricated devices known as atom chips, as almost arbitrary trap configurations can be realized in a robust and compact package. Until now, however, atom chip experiments have focused on small systems incorporating single or only a few individual traps. Here, we report experiments on a two-dimensional array of trapped ultracold atom clouds prepared using a simple magnetic-film atom chip. We are able to load atoms into hundreds of tightly confining and optically resolved array sites. We then cool the individual atom clouds in parallel to the critical temperature required for quantum degeneracy. Atoms are shuttled across the chip surface utilizing the atom chip as an atomic shift register and local manipulation of atoms is implemented using a focused laser to rapidly empty individual traps.
Highlights
At the core of our experiment is an atom chip, which incorporates a single 300 nm-thick FePt film, patterned using optical lithography, gold-coated and magnetized in the direction perpendicular to the film surface (Mz = 670 kA m−1)
The atom cloud first becomes corrugated as the trap merges with the field of the lattice, until for zero wire current the atoms are confined in the microtrap array alone
One powerful feature of magnetic lattices is the availability of rf cooling techniques, which we show can be applied to cool hundreds of atom clouds in parallel
Summary
At the core of our experiment (figure 1) is an atom chip (for design and fabrication details see [27]), which incorporates a single 300 nm-thick FePt film, patterned using optical lithography, gold-coated and magnetized in the direction perpendicular to the film surface (Mz = 670 kA m−1). We believe magnetic-film atom chips are best suited for high-density integration, as for example, an equivalent potential produced using currents through micron-sized gold wires would require a power dissipation of ∼30 W mm−2. A cloud of 87Rb atoms is collected and cooled in a mirror-magneto-optical trap and transferred to a single magnetic trap created by a current-carrying wire and the external field [15]. The atom cloud first becomes corrugated as the trap merges with the field of the lattice, until for zero wire current the atoms are confined in the microtrap array alone (figure 2). We observe atom loss over two characteristic time scales: minor initial loss over the first 100 ms, caused by residual evaporation of atoms over the potential barriers, background loss, occurring with a time constant of around 2 s
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