Ground-state properties of artificial bosonic atoms, Bose interaction blockade, and the single-atom pipette
- Department of Physics, University of Virginia, 382 McCormick Rd., P.O. Box 400714, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4714 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506 (United States)
We analyze the ground-state properties of an artificial atom made out of repulsive bosons attracted to a center for the case that all the interactions are short ranged. Such bosonic atoms could be created by optically trapping ultracold particles of alkali-metal vapors; we present the theory describing how their properties depend on experimentally adjustable strength of 'nuclear' attraction and interparticle repulsion. The binding ability of the short-range potential increases with space dimensionality, only a limited number of particles can be bound in one dimension, while in two and three dimensions the number of bound bosons can be chosen at will. Particularly in three dimensions we find an unusual effect of enhanced resonant binding: for not very strong interparticle repulsion the equilibrium number of bosons bound to a nuclear potential having a sufficiently shallow single-particle state increases without bound as the nuclear potential becomes less attractive. As a consequence of the competing nuclear attraction enhanced by the Bose statistics and interparticle repulsions, the dependence of the ground-state energy of the atom on the number of particles has a minimum whose position is experimentally tunable. This implies a staircase dependence of the equilibrium number of bound bosons on external parameters which may be used to create a single-atom pipette--an arrangement which allows the transport of atoms into and out of a reservoir, one at a time.
- OSTI ID:
- 20643779
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. A, Vol. 69, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.69.063401; (c) 2004 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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