Photon-correlation measurements of atomic-cloud temperature using an optical nanofiber

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel temperature measurement method for atomic clouds using photon-correlation in an optical nanofiber, providing an alternative to traditional techniques with validated results.

Contribution

The authors develop and validate a photon-correlation based temperature measurement technique using an optical nanofiber, offering a new approach for atomic cloud thermometry.

Findings

The method accurately measures atomic cloud temperature.

Results agree with standard time-of-flight measurements.

Trajectory simulations confirm the technique's validity.

Abstract

We develop a temperature measurement of an atomic cloud based on the temporal correlations of fluorescence photons evanescently coupled into an optical nanofiber. We measure the temporal width of the intensity-intensity correlation function due to atomic transit time and use it to determine the most probable atomic velocity, hence the temperature. This technique agrees well with standard time-of-flight temperature measurements. We confirm our results with trajectory simulations.