The Holographic Atom trap, HAT, is a novel far-off resonant optical trap formed by the interference of five Nd:YAG laser beams. At the intersection of the five beams a lattice of microtraps is formed. The microtraps are large enough that many atoms can be loaded per site (10 micrometer x 10 micrometer x 100 micrometer), yet are small enough that the atoms trapped in each site have large oscillation frequencies ( 6.0 kHz). These two features make the HAT a good source for generating high density clouds (n > 1015 atoms/cm3). These high density clouds are of interest for studying the formation of long range polar Rydberg molecules. I will describe the method used for creating these high density samples. Using a similar method we have created mesoscopic atom samples which contain 2000 atoms and are 5.6 micrometers in the longest direction. Creation of these samples represents an important step towards the observation of a complete Rydberg dipole blockade and eventually the realization of using Rydberg atoms for quantum computation.
Contact: Steven Rolston