Stand-alone vacuum cell for compact ultracold quantum technologies

Abstract

Compact vacuum systems are key enabling components for cold atom technologies, facilitating extremely accurate sensing applications. There has been important progress towards a truly portable compact vacuum system, however size, weight and power consumption can be prohibitively large, optical access may be limited, and active pumping is often required. Here, we present a centilitre-scale ceramic vacuum chamber with He-impermeable viewports and an integrated diffractive optic, enabling robust laser cooling with light from a single polarization-maintaining fibre. A cold atom demonstrator based on the vacuum cell delivers 10 7 laser-cooled 87 Rb atoms per second, using minimal electrical power. With continuous Rb gas emission active pumping yields a 10 −7 mbar equilibrium pressure, and passive pumping stabilises to 3 × 10 −6 mbar, with a 17 day time constant. A vacuum cell, with no Rb dispensing and only passive pumping, has currently kept a similar pressure for more than 500 days. The passive-pumping vacuum lifetime is several years, estimated from short-term He throughput, with many foreseeable improvements. This technology enables wide-ranging mobilization of ultracold quantum metrology.

A cold-atom Ramsey clock with a low volume physics package

“…Initially we envisage an actively pumped system with a physics package volume (not including magnetic shielding) of 100 cm being an achievable target. Passively pumped vacuum chambers have now been shown to maintain the UHV levels required for atom trapping for extended periods 40 , 41 , allowing for a reduction in power consumption by negating the continuous use of an ion pump. Whilst the stability performance of our clock is currently 10-50 times below the state-of-the-art commercial offerings 23 – 25 , similar performances should be possible with the discussed improvements to the system.…”

Microscopic 3D printed optical tweezers for atomic quantum technology

“…Currently, background light scatter from the large-diameter laser beams used for the demonstration of the macroscopic magneto-optical trap renders the detection of single trapped atoms in the fiber trap challenging. This limitation can be fully overcome using integrated and miniaturized setups for ultracold atoms [50,51].…”

Laser-written vapor cells for chip-scale atomic sensing and spectroscopy

“…As further development, different geometries and filling techniques based on alkali metal azide [80], mixture of argon and nitrogen [70] as well as other noble gas species like 3 He and 129 Xe [81], will be implemented to optimize specific applications as atomic references, atomic clocks, optical magnetometers and atomic gyroscopes. Finally, the use of NEG dispensers is an attractive feature for miniaturized cold-atoms sensors and compact ultracold quantum technologies [39,69,82].…”