Bichromatic forces for increasing the number of atoms in miniaturized traps*

The number of atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) scales very strongly with the size of the trapping beams. Therefore, atom numbers in miniature atom traps are often small. Bichromatic forces may greatly exceed spontaneous emission forces. These larger forces may be exploited to compensate for the number reduction from miniaturization. To the best of our knowledge to date, the simultaneous application of bichromatic forces in multiple dimensions has not been studied. We present our work on the development of miniature magneto-optical traps using bichromatic laser forces.