English

Cold atoms probe the magnetic field near a wire

Condensed Matter 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

A microscopic Ioffe-Pritchard trap is formed using a straight, current-carrying wire, together with suitable auxiliary magnetic fields. By measuring the distribution of cold rubidium atoms held in this trap, we detect a weak magnetic field component ΔBz\Delta B_z parallel to the wire. This field is proportional to the current in the wire and is approximately periodic along the wire with period λ=230μ\lambda=230 \mum. We find that the decrease of this field with distance from the centre of the wire is well described by the Bessel function K1(2πy/λ)K_1(2\pi y/\lambda), as one would expect for the far field of a transversely oscillating current within the wire.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0308434,
  title  = {Cold atoms probe the magnetic field near a wire},
  author = {M. P. A. Jones and C. J. Vale and D. Sahagun and B. V. Hall and C. C. Eberlein and B. E. Sauer and K. Furusawa and D. Richardson and E. A. Hinds},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0308434},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

8 pages, 4 figures