Cold atoms in hollow optical systems

Abstract

Cold atoms can be produced and manipulated by a combination of optical, electric, and magnetic fields. Once produced, however, it is desirable to minimize the external perturbations due to the trapping and/or cooling fields. In this paper, we describe several experiments that employ hollow optical systems, such as a hollow mirror atom trap and a hollow optical fiber. The cold atoms controlled thereby may be useful in producing a high-flux cold atomic beams for atom optics and in studying the quantum statistical properties in a lower-dimensional space.