• Accepted Paper

Λ-enhanced gray-molasses loading and EIT cooling of neutral atoms in nanophotonic traps

Lucas Pache, Antoine Glicenstein, Philipp Schneeweiss, Jürgen Volz, Arno Rauschenbeutel, and Riccardo Pennetta

PRX Quantum - Accepted 8 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5l6x-4377

Abstract

Nanophotonic traps for cold atoms typically have trap volumes that are orders of magnitude smaller than, e.g., free-space optical tweezers. This makes efficient loading of these traps challenging, thereby limiting the total number of atoms coupled to the nanophotonic waveguide. Here, we demonstrate that Λ-enhanced gray-molasses (ΛGM) can substantially increase the number of trapped atoms in a nanofiber-based cold-atom setup. Specifically, we observe a six-fold increase in the number of loaded atoms compared to conventional red-detuned polarization gradient cooling. Despite the unusually small depth of our optical trap of only 24 µK, we load about 4000 individual Cesium atoms, achieving optical depths exceeding 140 and reaching the collisional blockade regime over a length of approximately 1 mm. After loading, we perform efficient EIT-assisted cooling that is found to increase the trap storage time to 400(9) ms. This is a 5-fold improvement over the passive storage time. Remarkably, we observe that EIT-cooling also works with two co-propagating nanofiber-guided light fields and requires only about a few hundred picowatts of optical power. Our results provide an efficient method to boost both the number of loaded atoms and the storage time of nanophotonic atom traps.

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