Abstract

After the pioneering work of Friedburg and Paul [1] in the 1950s with electromagnetic lenses for neutral atomic beams laser manipulation offered new possibilities for atom optics. While many atom-optical investigations rely on light-matter interactions atoms that possess a magnetic dipole moment can also be manipulated by magnetic field strength gradients. With the help of permanent magnets made from NdFeB and SmCo alloys strong fields (>1T) with exactly specified multipole symmetry can be tailored, so that practical atom-optical lenses and simple „optical" systems for laser-prepared atoms can be realized [2].

© 1996 IEEE