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Updated: Jan 24, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Subwavelength-width optical tunnel junctions for ultracold atoms
F Jendrzejewski1, S Eckel2, T G Tiecke3,4
1Kirchhoff Institut für Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 227, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
Abstract:
We propose a method for creating far-field optical barrier potentials for ultracold atoms with widths that are narrower than the diffraction limit and can approach tens of nanometers. The reduced widths stem from the nonlinear atomic response to control fields that create spatially varying dark resonances. The subwavelength barrier is the result of the geometric scalar potential experienced by an atom prepared in such a spatially varying dark state. The performance of this technique, as well as its applications to the study of many-body physics and to the implementation of quantum-information protocols with ultracold atoms, are discussed, with a focus on the implementation of tunnel junctions.
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