Abstract

Laser cooled atoms can be trapped at periodic spatial positions in one, two, or three dimensions by ac Stark shift potential wells created by the interference of multiple laser beams.¹ These "optical lattices" constitute of novel form of matter in which atoms are located at sites separated on the scale of the optical wavelength. At currently achieved densities, atoms occupy very few of the available sites. However, the strict periodicity in the trapping position should result in long-range order in the atomic density correlation function.

© 1994 IEEE