Fused silica ion trap chip with efficient optical collection system for timekeeping, sensing, and emulation

ABSTRACT: The goal of this program is to develop an atom chip with a dual integrated and miniaturized optical and electromagnetic capability. We intend to develop a compact atom-chip-based system capable of producing and optically controlling and monitoring ultracold atoms with substantial reduction in complexity, size, weight and power consumption over the present state of the art. As part of this program we will also demonstrate the viability of our rapid-turn-around, and inexpensive fused silica micromachining system for producing standard and custom atom chips for the research and defense communities The combination of a microtrap with integrated and miniaturized optical interface features will facilitate the use of atom traps in many applications: It should provide a path to fabricate a single-atom atomic clock that would provide extreme accuracy in a small package. The fast readout mechanism would be based on efficiently capturing the fluorescence from the single atom through optics written in the fused silica body of the chip. This would represent a major advance for metrology. BENEFIT: Cold atomic gases are finding increasing utility in sensing of inertial forces, and magnetic fields, as well as in metrology. Devices and systems based on cold atoms have demonstrated orders of magnitude sensitivity improvement, for example, in measurements of local gravity. Similarly, for comparable geometries, atom gyroscopes have orders of magnitude greater sensitivity than their laser and fiber gyroscope counterparts. In addition, our proposed integration of optics with a chip trap has the potential to critically transform the use of ion traps for the collection of atomic fluorescence for motion/force sensors through Doppler velocimetry and the efficient collection of single photons from trapped ions for applications in fast single photon sources, quantum repeater circuitry, and high fidelity remote entanglement of atoms for quantum information protocols Thus, while the markets for atom chips are limited today to a few premier research groups, we expect they will grow very substantially in the future, as undoubtedly atom chips will find their way into broad commercial arenas (as well as Air Force interest). In this context our proposal brings to the atom chip field a microfabrication capability that will support the transition from the present one of a kind research and development need to the mass-producing of standardized atom chips.