We propose a robust scheme that creates a toroidal magnetic potential on a single-layer atom chip. The wire layout consists of two interleaved Archimedean spirals, which avoids the trapping perturbation caused by the input and output ports. By using a rotation bias field, the minimum of the time-averaged orbiting potential is lifted from zero, and then a relatively smooth and harmonic ring trap is formed. The location of the waveguide is immune to the magnetic variations, as it is only determined by the wire layout. The ring waveguide offers an ideal solution to developing a compact and portable atomic Kyroscope.
This paper observes the parametric excitation on atom chip by measuring the trap loss when applying a parametric modulation. By modulating the current in chip wires, it modulates not only the trap frequency but also the trap position. It shows that the strongest resonance occurs when the modulation frequency equals to the trap frequency. The resonance amplitude increases exponentially with modulation depth. Because the Z-trap is an anharmonic trap, there exists energy selective excitation which would cause parametric cooling. We confirm this effect by observing the temperature of atom cloud dropping.
