Nanotrappy: An open-source versatile package for cold-atom trapping close to nanostructures

Abstract

Trapping cold neutral atoms in close proximity to nanostructures has raised a large interest in recent years, pushing the frontiers of cavity-QED and boosting the emergence of the waveguide-QED field of research. The design of efficient dipole trapping schemes in evanescent fields is a crucial requirement and a difficult task. Here we present an open-source Python package for calculating optical trapping potentials for neutral atoms, especially in the vicinity of nanostructures. Given field distributions and for a variety of trap configurations, nanotrappy computes the three-dimensional trapping potentials as well as the trap properties, ranging from trap positions to trap frequencies and state-dependent light shifts. We demonstrate the versatility for various seminal structures in the field, e.g., optical nanofiber, alligator slow-mode photonic-crystal waveguide, and microtoroid. This versatile package facilitates the systematic design of structures and provides a full characterization of trapping potentials with applications to the coherent manipulation of atoms and quantum information science.