The role of wire imperfections in micro magnetic traps for atoms

We present a quantitative study of roughness in the magnitude of the magnetic fieldproduced by a current carrying microwire, i.e. in the trapping potential for paramagnetic atoms.We show that this potential roughness arises from deviations in the wire current flow due to geometric fluctuations of the edges of the wire : a measurement of the potentialusing cold trapped atoms agrees with the potential computed from the measurement of the wire edge roughness by a scanning electronmicroscope.