Abstract
Optical dipole traps emerged as a special case of what today we know as optical tweezers. They were first developed to trap neutral atoms, which posses a diameter much smaller than the wavelength of the trapping light. Due to its significance and applicability in cold atoms and molecules experiments, its comprehension becomes important. Therefore, in this work, we construct, step-by-step and didactically, the theoretical description of the optical dipole trap and one of its two possible regimes, the quasi-electrostatic trap (QUEST). We present one possible experimental setup, emphasizing the advantages of the optical dipole trap in the QUEST regime.
Keywords:
Optical dipole trap; QUEST; Polarizability; Cold atoms
