By placing changeable nanofabricated structures (wires, dots, etc.) on an atom mirror one can design guiding and trapping potentials for atoms. These potentials are similar to the electrostatic potentials which trap and guide electrons in semiconductor quantum devices like quantum wires and quantum dots. This technique will allow the fabrication of nanoscale atom optical devices. PACS. 03.75.Be...

Atom optics is the coherent manipulation of the atomic matter waves originally postulated by the developers of quantum mechanics. These pioneers also proposed the use of stimulated light forces to manipulate particles. These ideas have been combined with current technology to produce the field of atom optics. This, in turn, has shed new light on old quantum problems like the which way problem a...

Reading: For the quantum theory of beam splitters: • C.C. Gerry and P.L. Knight, Introductory Quantum Optics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005) Sect. 6.2. For the quantum theory of linear amplifiers: • C.M. Caves, “Quantum limits on noise in linear amplifiers,” Phys. Rev. D 26, 1817–1839 (1982). • L. Mandel and E. Wolf, Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics (Cambridge University Press...

We propose a scheme to create a macroscopic " Schödinger cat " state formed by two interacting Bose condensates. In analogy with quantum optics, where the control and engineering of quantum states can be maintained to a large extend, we consider the present scheme to be an example of quantum atom optics at work.