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Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Nanoscale "Dark State" Optical Potentials for Cold Atoms
M Łącki1,2, M A Baranov1,2, H Pichler1,2,3,4
1Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
Abstract:
We discuss the generation of subwavelength optical barriers on the scale of tens of nanometers, as conservative optical potentials for cold atoms. These arise from nonadiabatic corrections to Born-Oppenheimer potentials from dressed "dark states" in atomic Λ configurations. We illustrate the concepts with a double layer potential for atoms obtained from inserting an optical subwavelength barrier into a well generated by an off-resonant optical lattice, and discuss bound states of pairs of atoms interacting via magnetic dipolar interactions. The subwavelength optical barriers represent an optical "Kronig-Penney" potential. We present a detailed study of the band structure in optical Kronig-Penney potentials, including decoherence from spontaneous emission and atom loss to open "bright" channels.
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