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Trapping atoms around a nano-fiber

If light is coupled into a nano-fiber it will be guided by the fiber core. An optical fiber can be melted and drawn until its waist is less than an optical wavelength thin. Light propagating along this nano-section displays a large evanescent component. Trapping atoms in this evanescent field along a tapered nano-fiber offers a new, promising perspective to obtain optically dense ensembles which are homogeneously coupled to a single well defined spatial optical light mode while using only a few atoms.

We are in the process of setting up an experiment to cool and trap atoms along such a fiber and to use the strong interaction between light in the fiber mode and the atomic ensemble to produce entangled atomic states by QND measurements using the light as a meter system. Using appropriate measurements of the light fields the atoms can be projected into Gaussian and non-Gaussian entangled states which are a valuable resource both for implementing quantum repeaters and for precision measurements.