MANIPULATING THE MOTION OF A SINGLE-ATOM IN A STANDING-WAVE VIA FEEDBACK

A standing light wave appears to a highly detuned two-level atom as a sinusoidal potential. This causes the atoms to be channeled to the min ima of the potentials. At the same time, the atom changes the phase of the Light held. Detecting this phase shift yields information about t he position of the atom. In this paper we show that this information m ay be used to control the intensity of the light field so as to modify the effective shape of the potential ''seen'' by the atom. Our numeri cal simulations show that the effectiveness of the channeling may be s ignificantly enhanced by such quantum-limited feedback. We discuss pos sible applications to atom lithography.