Bose-Einstein condensates as surface probes: van der Waals forces in the intermediate regime
Prof. Dr. Claus Zimmermann (Universität Tübingen)

Van der Waals forces near a glass surface are combined with an evanescent light wave. This forms a trap for cold atoms at distances from the surface well below 1µm. The setup allows for a new method to directly measure the spatial dependence of the van der Waals potential in the regime around 200 nm from the surface. The experiment is a first step towards quantum optics near surfaces where dispersive forces may be used to develop a new generation of micro chip based atom optics.