English

Roughness suppression via rapid current modulation on an atom chip

Quantum Physics 2007-06-20 v2 Other Condensed Matter

Abstract

We present a method to suppress the potential roughness of a wire-based, magnetic atom guide: modulating the wire current at a few tens of kHz, the potential roughness, which is proportional to the wire current, averages to zero. Using ultra-cold 87Rb^{87}{\rm Rb} clouds, we show experimentally that modulation reduces the roughness by at least of a factor five without measurable heating or atom loss. This roughness suppression results in a dramatic reduction of the damping of center of mass oscillations.

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0701207,
  title  = {Roughness suppression via rapid current modulation on an atom chip},
  author = {Jean-Baptiste Trebbia and Carlos Leonardo Garrido Alzar and Ronald Cornelussen and Christoph I. Westbrook and Isabelle Bouchoule},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0701207},
  year   = {2007}
}