2003/11/30 by Philipp Treutlein, Peter Hommelhoff, Tilo Steinmetz +2 · 4 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adhesion, Friction, and Surface Interactions #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Semiconductor Lasers and Optical Devices #cond-mat #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.203005
Revised version, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett., 4 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2004/04/22 · openalex publication_date 2004/05/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We report the coherent manipulation of internal states of neutral atoms in a magnetic microchip trap. Coherence lifetimes exceeding 1 s are observed with atoms at distances of 5-130 microm from the microchip surface. The coherence lifetime in the chip trap is independent of atom-surface distance within our measurement accuracy and agrees well with the results of similar measurements in macroscopic magnetic traps. Because of the absence of surface-induced decoherence, a miniaturized atomic clock with a relative stability in the 10(-13) range can be realized. For applications in quantum information processing, we propose to use microwave near fields in the proximity of chip wires to create potentials that depend on the internal state of the atoms.