Engineering Light-Matter Interactions in Photonic Crystal Waveguides

Integrating ultracold atoms with nanophotonics enables the exploration of new paradigms in quantum optics and many body physics. Low-loss dielectric structures can be fabricated to support guided mode light used to create stable trapping potentials for neutral atoms. The dispersion relation of a Photonic crystal waveguide structure can be engineered to study the physics of photon-mediated atom-atom interactions as well as collective atomic effects. We utilize an optical lattice transport approach to achieve high fractional filling of the trap sites and report phase sensitive delivery of the atoms with respect to the lattice period. We will also report on efforts toward trapping atoms along the photonic crystal waveguide.