Strong saturation absorption imaging of dense clouds of ultracold atoms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-intensity absorption imaging method for dense ultracold atomic clouds, enabling accurate characterization of their size and density despite high optical thickness.

Contribution

It presents a novel saturation absorption imaging technique and calibration procedure for dense ultracold atom clouds, improving measurement accuracy in high-density regimes.

Findings

Successful imaging of dense ultracold atom clouds.

Quantitative measurement of cloud profiles and spatial extent.

Enhanced understanding of non-linear atomic responses.

Abstract

We report on a far above saturation absorption imaging technique to investigate the characteristics of dense packets of ultracold atoms. The transparency of the cloud is controlled by the incident light intensity as a result of the non-linear response of the atoms to the probe beam. We detail our experimental procedure to calibrate the imaging system for reliable quantitative measurements, and demonstrate the use of this technique to extract the profile and its spatial extent of an optically thick atomic cloud.