Cotter J P, McGilligan J P, Griffin P F, Rabey I M, Docherty K, Riis E, Arnold A S, Hinds E A
1The Centre for Cold Matter, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ UK.
2Faculty of Physics, VCQ, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
Appl Phys B. 2016;122(6):172. doi: 10.1007/s00340-016-6415-y. Epub 2016 Jun 1.
It has recently been shown that optical reflection gratings fabricated directly into an atom chip provide a simple and effective way to trap and cool substantial clouds of atoms (Nshii et al. in Nat Nanotechnol 8:321-324, 2013; McGilligan et al. in Opt Express 23(7):8948-8959, 2015). In this article, we describe how the gratings are designed and microfabricated and we characterise their optical properties, which determine their effectiveness as a cold atom source. We use simple scalar diffraction theory to understand how the morphology of the gratings determines the power in the diffracted beams.
