Guiding and Trapping of Cold Rb Atoms with a Hollow Laser Beams

We have guided cold Rb atoms in a blue-detuned hollow laser beam over a distance of 11 cm with a maximum guiding efficiency of 23 %. We have also constructed a novel type of blue-detuned optical dipole trap by using two-crossed hollow laser beams. About 10⁵ atoms of temperature 7 μK are confined in the optical trap for 100 ms. We have also performed simulations of guiding cold atoms in the hollow laser beam and trapping cold atoms in the optical trap based on the dressed-atom picture and have found that the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental results.