Miniature Atomic Beams for Integrated Atomic Quantum Devices

Abstract

Atomic sensors—devices that utilize individual atoms as the sensing mechanism—offer enormous prospects for high sensitivity, accuracy and immunity to environmental noise. This is because such sensors leverage quantum mechanical properties of the atom such as internal energy level splittings that do not change with time and are immune to sensor fabrication errors. While some of these sensors are now commercially available, they are still bulky instruments that must be individually assembled by hand and will not be widely disseminated in their current form. Recently we have developed a novel platform for the realization of on-chip atomic devices with applicability to realizing new wafer-scale atomic clocks, gyroscopes and other sensors. In this talk I will discuss how we realize such devices in the laboratory, and what the prospects are for realizing the dream of co-integrating precision atomic and electronic sensing instruments.