Systematic design of a robust half-W1 photonic crystal waveguide for interfacing slow light and trapped cold atoms

Abstract

Novel platforms interfacing trapped cold atoms and guided light in nanoscale waveguides are a promising route to achieve a regime of strong coupling between light and atoms in single pass, with applications to quantum non-linear optics and quantum simulation. A strong challenge for the experimental development of this emerging waveguide-QED field of research is to combine facilitated optical access for atom transport, atom trapping via guided modes and robustness to inherent nanofabrication imperfections. In this endeavor, here we propose to interface Rubidium atoms with a photonic crystal waveguide based on a large-index GaInP slab. With a specifically tailored half-W1 design, we show that a large coupling to the waveguide can be obtained and guided modes can be used to form two-color dipole traps for atoms at about 100 nm from the edge of the structure. This optimized device should greatly improve the level of experimental control and facilitate the atom integration.

Transporting Cold Atoms towards a GaN-on-Sapphire Chip via an Optical Conveyor Belt

“…DOI: 10.1088/0256-307X/40/9/093701 By introducing neutral atoms to integrated photonic devices, hybrid photonic-atomic chips (PACs) have attracted extensive research in recent years. [1][2][3][4][5] Benefiting from the strongly enhanced light-matter interactions due to the tightly optical field confinement at the wavelength and even subwavelength scale, PACs hold great potential in many quantum-based applications, such as quantum memory, [6,7] novel quantum light sources, [8] chiral quantum optics devices, [9,10] nodes of quantum networks, [11][12][13] novel quantum optics phenomena with surface plasmons, [14,15] many-body physics, [16,17] and quantum sensing. [18,19] Early attempts to trap cold neutral atoms near surface microstructures were initially investigated above current carrying microstructures, [20,21] which can be tailored to create a variety of potential geometry and guiding schemes for cold atoms.…”