Abstract

We investigate the possibility of strong localization, of the Lamb–Dicke type, for cold atoms trapped by a far off-resonant Ferris wheel optical dipole potential. This optical dipole potential light field is created when a light field generated by the superposition of two similar co-propagating Laguerre–Gaussian beams, with opposite winding numbers, interacts with a two-level atom. We show that strong confinement of atoms in such a light field is possible when the light field is tightly focused, for low values of the winding number and relatively high values of power. We show that a combination of a Ferris wheel with an ordinary axial Gaussian optical lattice provides 3D cylindrically symmetric optical lattices in which the Lamb–Dicke limit can be reached for typically used experimental parameter values.

© 2021 Optica Publishing Group

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