Adiabatic focusing of cold atoms in a blue-detuned laser standing wave

Adiabatic focusing of cold atoms in a blue-detuned laser standing wave is analyzed. It is shown that using repulsive light forces that push atoms towards dark regions and thus minimizes heating, cold atoms can be adiabatically compressed by more than an order of magnitude to yield background-free sub-10-nm (rms) spots. The optimal parameters for the atomic lens and the maximal compression ratio are predicted using an analytic model and found to be in agreement with the exact results of our Monte Carlo simulations. A combined adiabatic-coherent scheme is proposed and shown to yield 8.8 nm spot size even for a thermal atomic beam. Received: 1 October 1999 / Revised version: 13 December 1999 / Published online: 5 April 2000