Light Propagation in Linear Optical Media

11 Trapping Cold Atoms with Laser Light

In this chapter we present an interesting application of the propagation of laser light through linear optical media: the ability to spatially confine (trap) cold atoms within localized light intensity patterns. We first present some of the fundamentals for understanding how light can trap an atom. Depending upon the relationship between the properties of the atom and the properties of the laser light, atoms can be trapped in either localized dark spots, or localized bright spots. We will describe several light patterns for trapping atoms:

• The tightly localized bright and dark regions in the near-field diffraction patterns presented in Chapters 7 and 8,
• The near-field patterns projected to a location ...