Cold atom beam splitter realized with two crossing dipole guides.
Cold rubidium atoms, coupled and guided in a vertical laser beam by the dipole force, have been split into two atomic beams, by using a second time-dependent laser beam crossing the vertical one at a 0.12 rad angle. Transfer efficiency as large as 40% has been obtained. At 10 mm below the cold atom source, the two atomic beams have a few hundred micron size and are more than one millimeter apart from each other.
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Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS II, bâtiment 505, Campus d'Orsay, 91405 Orsay cedex, France.
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Pruvost
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