Demonstration of a cold atom beam splitter on atom chip

Jiang Xiaojun^{1, 2}, Li Xiaolin¹, Zhang Haichao^{1, †,}, Wang Yuzhu^{1, ‡,}

Absorption images of the cold atoms in the xz plane under different I_U. (a) Cold atoms are initially loaded and prepared in the Z-trap (I_U = 0 A). (b)–(c) The atom cloud is split into two parts with almost symmetrical profiles (I_U = 2 A and I_U = 4 A), corresponding to a 50/50 splitting ratio. (d) After switching off the current of the U-wire, the two separate atom clouds are recombining to a single atom cloud again.