Abstract

It has recently been demonstrated that light pressure force can create a desired pattern on a substrate by manipulating an atomic beam while the atoms are being deposited onto the substrate surface.¹ It has long been known that the dipole force due to the interaction between a two-level atom and a standing-wave optical field can channel atoms into the intensity minima or maxima of a standing-wave optical field.^2–5 We have demonstrated that these two techniques can be combined to create sodium gratings on a silicon surface, where the gratings have the period of half the wavelength of the standing-wave field, or approximately 3000 Å for the 3²S1/2 → 3²P3/2 transition in sodium.

© 1992 Optical Society of America