  The manipulation of cold atoms with optical fields is a very promising
technique for a variety of applications ranging from laser cooling and trapping
to coherent atom transport and matter wave interferometry. Optical fields have
also been proposed as interesting tools for quantum information processing with
cold atoms. In this paper, we present a theoretical study of the dynamics of a
cold 87Rb atomic cloud falling in the gravity field in the presence of two
crossing dipole guides. The cloud is either deflected or split between the two
branches of this guide. We explore the possibilities of optimization of this
device and present preliminary results obtained in the case of zero-temperature
dilute Bose-Einstein condensates.
