A mirror magneto-optical trap (MOT) that exploits a hexapole-compensated magnetic field was developed and used in the experimental surface trapping of neutral atoms. A pair of subsidiary wires, which was placed near the main current-carrying wire, was designed to improve the uniformity of the quadrupole magnetic field and thus increased the effective capture volume of our mirror-MOT. In the experiment, the number of 87Rb atoms captured with our mirror-MOT was approximately twice that captured with a conventional mirror-MOT.

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.76.013419