The last four decades have witnessed a renaissance of atomic physics thanks to the spectacular theoretical and experimental achievements in atom cooling and trapping. These advancements have made major contributions to achieving complete control over single quantum systems. Applications such as atom lasers, quantum computers, optical tweezers, atomic conveyor belts, and quantum simulators, among others, will be fundamental to future technologies.
This book—whose author has been actively researching the field for about three decades—is the first to popularize cold atomic physics and aims to help a broad audience fully appreciate the mentioned advancements. It provides the basic prerequisite knowledge of the field, as well as its historical and scientific roots, and its most important applications. Its extensive glossary will help to acquaint readers with the terminology of the field. Taming Atoms is written for science students, science fans, educators, and science communicators. The rich bibliography will be useful for graduate students and researchers in the field.
In a recent experiment Shegai et al.1 have shown that a bimetallic particle dimer composed of gold and silver atoms may work as a directional frequency filter which scatters light of different frequencies in different directions. A phase difference between emitters required for the directional scattering of light was determined by the complex particle polarizabilities and therefore varies with the size, shape and material composition of the particles in accordance with their plasmon resonance characteristics. In this paper, we give a theoretical explanation of the experimental results in terms of interference between light fields emitted by nonidentical radiators.
The total internal reflection of an optical beam with a phase singularity can generate evanescent light that displays a
rotational character. At a metalized surface, in particular, field components extending into the vacuum region possess
vortex properties in addition to surface plasmon features. These surface plasmonic vortices retain the phase singularity
of the input light, also mapping its associated orbital angular momentum. In addition to a two-dimensional patterning on
the surface, the strongly localized intensity distribution decays with distance perpendicular to the film surface. The
detailed characteristics of these surface optical vortex structures depend on the incident beam parameters and the
dielectric mismatch of the media. The static interference of the resulting surface vortices, achieved by using beams
suitably configured to restrict lateral in-plane motion, can be shown to give rise to optical forces that produce interesting
dynamical effects on atoms or small molecules trapped in the vicinity of the surface. As well as trapping within the
surface plasmonic fields, model calculations reveal that the corresponding atomic trajectories will typically exhibit a
variety of rotational and vibrational effects, significantly depending on the extent and sign of detuning from resonance.
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