Optical trap for an atom around the midpoint between two coupled identical parallel optical nanofibers

Abstract

We study the trapping of a ground-state cesium atom in a small region around the midpoint between two coupled identical parallel optical nanofibers. We suggest using a blue-detuned guided light field in the odd Ez-sine array mode to produce an optical potential with a local minimum of exactly zero at the midpoint between the nanofibers. We find that the effects of the van der Waals potential on the total trapping potential around the minimum point are not significant when the fiber separation distance and the power of the guided light field are large. For appropriate realistic parameters, a net trapping potential with a significant depth of about 1 mK, a large scattering-limited coherence time of several seconds, and a large recoil-heating-limited trap lifetime of several hours can be obtained. We investigate the dependencies of the trapping potential on the power of the guided light field, the fiber radius, the wavelength of light, and the fiber separation distance.