Quantum modes of atomic waveguides by series techniques (Q2820896)

It is well known that atomic waveguides are used to manipulate cold atoms in atom interferometers and the creation of atom interferometers using cold atoms in miniature magnetic waveguides is one of many goals of recent atom chip researches. To achieve a complete understanding of atom propagation in a complicated device such as a guided atom interferometer, a detailed understanding of the ground state and other nearby states is needed. Here the Frobenius series solutions for the bounded transverse modes of an atomic waveguide are presented and arbitrary precision arithmetic is used to evaluate the series solutions without roundoff errors. It is supposed that the considered waveguide potential is an infinitely long quadrupole magnetic potential as used in various atom chip waveguides. Only the simplest case of a guided spin-1/2 particle is considered. However, the basic series techniques can be extended to both higher-order multi-pole potentials and higher spin particles, including atoms with hyperfine splitting. The low-field and the high-field seeking states together form the spectrum of the waveguide Hamiltonian. In the limit where the transverse dimension of the guide tends to infinity, the spectrum of the guide changes from a discrete set of low- and high-field seeking states to a continuum of high-field seeking states embedded with a discrete set of low-field seeking states. Although the low-field seeking states are not truly bound, the system is an approximate example of bound states in a continuum first discussed by von Neumann and Wigner. Depending on boundary conditions, the solutions form either a discrete set or a continuum of orthogonal waveguide modes. These results are useful for a further analysis of ideal waveguide behavior as well as the detailed perturbation studies necessary for the analysis of atomic waveguide interferometers.