Atom chips have enabled real-world applications of ultracold atom technology by reducing the SWAP requirements of relatively complex laboratory-based experiments. This has resulted in compact apparatus, such as the Cold Atoms Laboratory, flying on the International Space Station. While these approaches have reached a high degree of refinement, the most powerful and precise techniques for trapping ultracold atoms are instead based on tailored optical traps, formed from precisely shaped and focused laser beams. The advantages of optical traps are rapid reconfigurability and increased dynamic control of the cold atom system, essential for applications such as trapped and/or guided atom interferometry for inertial navigation or mass sensing. However, combining these two trapping technologies has proved challenging due to the optical access being restricted by the opaque atom chip, making the integration of optical elements clunky and challenging.

Combine key aspects of magnetic trapping on atom chips, via integrated electrodes, with integrated photonic elements. This will enable additional optical trapping, based on both evanescently coupled optical fields to surface etched features (such as ring structures), and via direct projection through the backside of a transparent atom chip. This project will develop new atom chip approaches, including traps based on transparent conducting films on transparent substrates. Key aspects will include optical design and wavefront control to enable high-resolution aberration-corrected imaging through the substrate structures.