A laser-cooled atom beam for nanolithography applications

We are developing an apparatus for atom lithography with the main objective of to push the space resolution of the technique towards its ultimate limit, expected in the 10 nm range. We exploit an original implementation of laser-cooling techniques to produce a brilliant and collimated cesium beam with low longitudinal velocity. Beam characterization, carried out with a variety of spectroscopic techniques, demonstrates the compatibility of the system with the strict requirements of nanolithography experiments.