An ellipsoidal mirror for focusing of neutral atomic and molecular beams

K. Fladischer (1) , H. Reingruber (1, 2) , T. Reisinger (1) , V. Mayrhofer (1) , W.E. Ernst (1) , A.E. Ross (3) , D.A. Maclaren (3) , W. Allison, (3) , D. Litwin (4) , J. Galas (4) , S. Sitarek (4) , P. Nieto (5) , D. Barredo (5) , D. Farias (5) , R. Miranda (5) , B. Surma (6) , A. Miros (6) , B. Piatkowski (6) , E. Sondergard (7) , B. Holst (1, 2)

1 Institute of Experimental Physics [Graz]
2 UiB - Department of Physics and Technology [Bergen]
3 Cavendish Laboratory
4 Institute of Applied Optics
5 Departemento de fisica de la materia condensada
6 Institute of Electronic Materials technology
7 SVI - Surface du Verre et Interfaces

Manipulation of atomic and molecular beams is essential to atom optics applications including atom lasers, atom lithography, atom interferometry and neutral atom microscopy. The manipulation of charge-neutral beams of limited polarisability, spin or excitation states remains problematic, but may be overcome by the development of novel diffractive or reflective optical elements. In this paper we present the first experimental demonstration of atom focusing using an ellipsoidal mirror. The ellipsoidal mirror enables stigmatic off-axis focusing for the first time and we demonstrate focusing of a beam of neutral, ground state helium atoms down to an approximately circular spot, (31.4 ± 0.8) μm x (26.8 ± 0.5) μm in size. This spot size is two orders of magnitude smaller than previous reflective focusing of atomic beams and is a critical milestone towards the construction of a high intensity scanning Helium microscope.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

K. Fladischer, H. Reingruber, T. Reisinger, V. Mayrhofer, W.E. Ernst, et al.. An ellipsoidal mirror for focusing of neutral atomic and molecular beams. New Journal of Physics, 2010, 12, pp.033018. ⟨10.1088/1367-2630/12/3/033018⟩. ⟨hal-00504443⟩