Abstract

The spectacular experiments with ultracold neutral atoms are intimately connected with the development of sophisticated techniques for coherent control of internal and motional degrees of freedom of the atoms. For quantum information processing (QIP) and quantum simulations, for example, tailored potentials are required which control atomic dynamics, but at the same time, control of internal degrees of freedom is needed. The latter represent qubits in QIP or spin degrees of freedom in the case of quantum simulations of condensed matter Hamiltonians. Potentials which are in principle arbitrarily configurable can be realized in magnetic near-field traps on microfabricated ‘atom chips’. However, state-selectivity as known from optical dipole traps is limited in magnetic potentials.

© 2009 IEEE