We report on the epitaxial growth and the characterization of thin FePt films and the subsequent patterning of magnetic lattice structures. These structures can be used to trap ultracold atoms for quantum simulation experiments. We use molecular beam epitaxy to deposit monocrystalline FePt films with a thickness of 50 nm. The films are characterized with X-ray scattering and Mössbauer spectroscopy to determine the long range order parameter and the hard magnetic axes. A high monocrystalline fraction was measured as well as a strong remanent magnetization of M = 900 kA/m and coercivity of 0.4 T. Using electron beam lithography and argon ion milling, we create lattice patterns with a period down to 200 nm, and a resolution of 30 nm. The resulting lattices are imaged in a scanning electron microscope in the cross-section created by a focused ion beam. A lattice with continuously varying lattice constant ranging from 5 μm down to 250 nm has been created to show the wide range of length scales that can now be created with this technique.@en

We succeeded to image with magnetic force microscopy individual vortices in thin Nb films as well as in thin YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) films. Relying on the imaging of microfabricated gold loops, we are able to identify the exact location of the vortices within 10 nm with respect to topographic features. The center of most of the vortices is located in between the grains appearing at the film surface. For the Nb films with a larger coherence length, the pinning can be linked to the reduced film thickness in between the protruding grains. For the YBCO films with a very small coherence length, the pinning is likely to be dominated by line defects at the trenches in between the growth islands. On the other hand, Fourier analysis of the imaged vortex distribution shows that for thicker Nb films not all of the vortices are pinned in between the grains. Due to the vortex-vortex repulsion, the vortex lattice reveals short-range correlations which become more pronounced at higher fields.@en