We discuss heating and decoherence in traps for ions and neutral particles close to metallic surfaces. We focus on simple trap geometries and compute noise spectra of thermally excited electromagnetic fields. If the trap is located in the near field of the substrate, the field fluctuations are largely increased compared to the level of the blackbody field, leading to much shorter coherence and life times of the trapped atoms. The corresponding time constants are computed for ion traps and magnetic traps. Analytical estimates for the size dependence of the noise spectrum are given. We finally discuss prospects for the coherent transport of matter waves in integrated surface waveguides.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0005038,
title = {Heating of trapped particles close to surfaces - Blackbody and beyond},
author = {C. Henkel and M. Wilkens},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0005038},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
accepted for publication in acta physica slovaca (Proceedings of 7th Central European Workshop on Quantum Optics (Balatonfuered, Hungary, April 2000). 12 pages, 8 figures, actaps.cls style file