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Home > Press > Bringing Atoms to a Standstill: NIST Miniaturizes Laser Cooling January
Credit: NIST
Illustration of a new optical system to miniaturize the laser cooling of atoms, a key step towards cooling atoms on a microchip. A beam of laser light is launched from a photonic integrated circuit (PIC), aided by an element called an extreme mode converter (EMC) that greatly expands the beam. The beam then strikes a carefully engineered, ultrathin film known as a metasurface (MS), which is studded with tiny pillars that further expand and shape the beam. The beam is diffracted from a grating chip to form multiple overlapping laser beams inside a vacuum chamber. The combination of laser beams and a magnetic field efficiently cools and traps a large collection of gaseous atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT).