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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Fabrication and Testing of Microfluidic Optomechanical Oscillators
Published on: May 29, 2014
Real-time control of the periodicity of a standing wave: an optical accordion
1Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA. tcli@physics.utexas.edu
Abstract:
We report an experimental method to create optical lattices with real-time control of their periodicity. We demonstrate a continuous change of the lattice periodicity from 0.96 microm to 11.2 microm in one second, while the center fringe only moves less than 2.7 microm during the whole process. This provides a powerful tool for controlling ultracold atoms in optical lattices, where small spacing is essential for quantum tunneling, and large spacing enables single-site manipulation and spatially resolved detection.
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