High-density mesoscopic atom clouds in a holographic atom trap

We demonstrate the production of micron-sized high-density atom clouds of interest for mesoscopic quantum information processing. We evaporate atoms from 60 muK, 3x10(14) atoms/cm(3) samples contained in a highly anisotropic optical lattice formed by interfering diffracted beams from a holographic phase plate. After evaporating to 1 muK by lowering the confining potential, in less than a second the atom density reduces to 8x10(13) cm(-3) at a phase space density approaching unity. Adiabatic recompression of the atoms then increases the density to levels in excess of 1x10(15) cm(-3). The resulting clouds are typically 8 mum in the longest dimension. Such samples are small enough to enable mesoscopic quantum manipulation using the Rydberg blockade and have the high densities required to investigate collision phenomena.