We present a compact optical delivery design for a 2D+ MOT which is used in conjunction with a magnetic assembly and a commercial vacuum piece to create a standardised cold atom source. The design provides a plug-and-play system, free of optical alignment, capable of producing an atomic flux of >1e9 atoms per second with <50mW of laser power. The dimensions of the system are 67mm x 67mm x 112mm (W x H x L), where such compactness is achieved through a fixed optical design, additive manufacturing techniques, and a novel beam expansion method which forms a multiply split cylindrical beam.
ColdQuanta leads in the commercialization of quantum atomic technologies for both laboratory and real-world applications. However, the two spaces require very different responses. Size, weight and power reduction is critical to enable many deployed systems. In these cases, ColdQuanta has focused on compact technologies. For research applications, flexibility and performance is the key and ColdQuanta targets higher performance, more versatile technologies. A third option is providing remote access to research systems and capabilities, which suggests quantum-as-a-service as a viable model. This approach minimizes many of the risks while providing unique advantages for the quantum industry.
ColdQuanta’s microShutter is a free-space, chip-scale mechanical shutter designed for laser shuttering applications. The microShutter breaks through the size constraints of MEMS fiber shutters by eliminating the optical fiber and operating on the beam inline and in free-space. The microShutter allows laser shuttering in a form factor and with a power budget that enables high performance optical applications in hand-held devices. Uniquely, each microShutter chip integrates a beam dump that captures stray light in an on-board light trap. The microShutter is designed to the power, performance, and size requirements of portable atomic clocks and other compact atomic systems requiring free-space optical distribution. The prototype chip has been demonstrated to draw less than 0.5 μA at 150 V. A low power driver circuit that can operate the microShutter with 2.5 mW with a 4V supply has been demonstrated. Early prototypes demonstrate extinction below -45 dB with insertion loss of -2 dB, an open-closed transition time of 12 μs and closed-open transition time of 14 µs.
To simplify applications that rely on optical trapping of cold and ultracold atoms, ColdQuanta is developing techniques to incorporate miniature optical components onto in-vacuum atom chips. The result is a hybrid atom chip that combines an in-vacuum micro-optical bench for optical control with an atom chip for magnetic control. Placing optical components on a chip inside of the vacuum system produces a compact system that can be targeted to specific experiments, in this case the generation of optical lattices. Applications that can benefit from this technology include timekeeping, inertial sensing, gravimetry, quantum information, and emulation of quantum many-body systems. ColdQuanta’s GlasSi atom chip technology incorporates glass windows in the plane of a silicon atom chip. In conjunction with the in-vacuum micro-optical bench, optical lattices can be generated within a few hundred microns of an atom chip window through which single atomic lattice sites can be imaged with sub-micron spatial resolution. The result is a quantum gas microscope that allows optical lattices to be studied at the level of single lattice sites. Similar to what ColdQuanta has achieved with magneto-optical traps (MOTs) in its miniMOT system and with Bose- Einstein condensates (BECs) in its RuBECi(R) system, ColdQuanta seeks to apply the on-chip optical bench technology to studies of optical lattices in a commercially available, turnkey system. These techniques are currently being considered for lattice experiments in NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) slated for flight on the International Space Station.
The Fabry-Perot Interferometer based accelerometer is proposed for use in fiber optic sensor networks. Despite
the potential for high performance in the detection of vibrations, previously such sensors had limited use in these
networks. Since the sensor operates as an optical transmission loss filter, simple serial network implementations
are difficult. However, by forming the optical resonance cavity of the sensor with wavelength dependent reflective
surfaces, a simply serialized network of sensor can be demonstrated through the wavelength division multiplexing
of the interferometric signal fringes. This paper summarizes the concept and experimentally demonstrates and
evaluated the serialization of two acceleration sensors.
We introduce a technology for robust and low maintenance sensor networks capable of detecting micro-g accelerations in a wide frequency bandwidth (above 1,000 Hz). Sensor networks with such performance are critical for navigation, seismology, acoustic sensing, and for the health monitoring of civil structures. The approach is based on the fabrication of an array of highly sensitive accelerometers, each using a Fabry-Perot cavity with transparent passbands at specific wavelengths that allows for embedded optical detection and serialization. A unique feature of this approach is that no local power source is required for each individual sensor. Instead one global light source is used, providing an optical input signal which propagates through an optical fiber network from sensor to sensor. The information from each sensor is embedded into the transmitted light as a wavelength division multiplexed signal. We present for the first time the preliminary demonstration of a system of two linear serialized wavelength division multiplexed Fabry-Perot sensors of less then 1.5dB loss per device. The sensors are formed using an optical thin film multilayer structure that takes advantage of the natural non-uniformity in deposited thin films to allow serialization.
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