Potential landscaping for ultracold atoms using holographic optical traps

The development of new laser beam shaping methods is important in a variety of fields within optics, atomic physics and biophotonics. Spatial light modulators offer a highly versatile method of time-dependent beam shaping, based on imprinting a phase profile onto an incident laser beam that determines the intensity in the trapping plane laser field. The calculation of the required phase is a well-known inverse problem, which can be tackled with different approaches. Our method based on conjugate gradient minimisation [1] not only allows the calculation of smooth and accurate intensity profiles suitable for trapping cold atoms, but can also be used to generate multi-wavelength traps [2] and for simultaneous control over both the intensity and the phase of the light [3], with exceptionally high reconstruction fidelity.

References:
[1] T Harte, et al., "Conjugate gradient minimisation approach to generating holographic traps for ultracold atoms" Opt. Express 22, 26548 (2014)
[2] D Bowman, et al., "Multi-wavelength holography with a single spatial light modulator for ultracold atom experiments" Opt. Express 23, 8365 (2015)
[3] D Bowman, et al., "High-fidelity phase and amplitude control of phase-only computer generated holograms using conjugate gradient minimisation" Opt. Express 25, 11692 (2017)