Design of a technique to measure the density of ultracold atoms in a short-period optical lattice in three dimensions with single atom sensitivity

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel technique for three-dimensional, single-atom sensitive measurement of ultracold atoms in a short-period optical lattice, enabling detailed site occupancy mapping.

Contribution

The authors introduce a new measurement method combining accordion and pinning lattices with polarization gradient cooling for high-resolution 3D atom detection.

Findings

Achieves ~half-wavelength spatial resolution in 3D

Measures actual site occupancy, not just parity

Potential for studying ultracold quantum dynamics

Abstract

A measurement technique is described which has the potential to map the atomic site occupancies of ultracold atoms in a short-period three-dimensional optical lattice. The method uses accordion and pinning lattices, together with polarization gradient cooling and fluorescence detection, to measure the positions of individual atoms within the sample in three dimensions at a resolution of around half the atomic resonant wavelength. The method measures the site occupancy, rather than the parity of the site occupancy, of atoms in the lattice. It is expected that such measurements hold significant potential for the study of ultracold quantum dynamics.