A study of atom localization in an optical lattice by analysis of the scattered light

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates atom localization in a four-beam optical lattice by analyzing scattered light, revealing that atomic oscillation damping can be significantly lower than photon scattering rates, challenging previous assumptions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental approach using scattered light analysis to study atom localization and oscillation damping in optical lattices, with comparisons across different configurations.

Findings

Damping rate of atomic oscillations can be much smaller than photon scattering rate.

Lamb-Dicke effect can be negligible in certain configurations.

Different lattice configurations affect scattering and localization behavior.

Abstract

We present an experimental study of a four beam optical lattice using the light scattered by the atoms in the lattice. We use both intensity correlations and observations of the transient behavior of the scattering when the lattice is suddenly switched on. We compare results for 3 different configurations of the optical lattice. We create situations in which the Lamb-Dicke effect is negligible and show that, in contrast to what has been stated in some of the literature, the damping rate of the 'coherent' atomic oscillations can be much smaller than the inelastic photon scattering rate.