Amsterdam Atom Chips

Welcome to the home page of the atom chip groups at the University of Amsterdam.
We have two atom-chip experiments operational.

• The CELSIUS experiment (PI: dr. N.J. van Druten) uses chips based on patterns of current-carrying wires. The main focus is the physics of low-dimensional quantum gases.
• The magnetic-film chip experiment (PI: dr. R.J.C. Spreeuw) uses chips based on patterned films of permanently magnetic material. Its main focus is quantum information, in particular the development of a neutral-atom quantum register.

News: 2D lattice of magnetic microtraps

Left: electron microscope photograph of our atom chip based on a patterned, 300-nm thick FePt film (magnetized out of plane). Four trapping sites are indicated by dashed ellipses. Right: experimentally obtained absorption image of ultracold clouds of ⁸⁷Rb atoms, trapped about 10 µm from the chip surface. Traps in the center contain approximately 10⁴ atoms each. This lattice is very promising as it can potentially fulfill all the requirements of a scalable and addressable quantum information register. See also the pages of the permanent magnet chip project.

Two BEC's-on-a-chip

Both of our atom chip setups have achieved Bose-Einstein condensation in 2006!
More detailed descriptions can be found here and here.