Electrodynamic trapping of spinless neutral atoms with an atom chip

Three-dimensional electrodynamic trapping of neutral atoms has been demonstrated. By applying time-varying inhomogeneous electric fields with micron-sized electrodes, nearly 10(2) strontium atoms in the S-1(0) state have been trapped with a lifetime of 80 ms. In order to design the electrodes, we numerically analyzed the electric field and simulated atomic trajectories in the trap, which showed reasonable agreement with the experiment.