Super-resolution microscopy of cold atoms in an optical lattice

TL;DR

This paper introduces a super-resolution imaging technique for cold atoms in optical lattices, achieving nanometer-scale resolution and enabling observation of atomic dynamics and density patterns with potential applications in atomic physics.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a novel super-resolution method based on nonlinear optical response, allowing nanometer-scale imaging of cold atoms in optical lattices with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Findings

Achieved a 32 nm FWHM resolution in atomic density imaging.

Resolved atomic dynamics within a single lattice site in 1.4 μs.

Observed magnified moiré patterns as images of atomic density.

Abstract

Super-resolution microscopy has revolutionized the fields of chemistry and biology by resolving features at the molecular level. Such techniques can be either "stochastic," gaining resolution through precise localization of point source emitters, or "deterministic," leveraging the nonlinear optical response of a sample to improve resolution. In atomic physics, deterministic methods can be applied to reveal the atomic wavefunction and to perform quantum control. Here we demonstrate super-resolution imaging based on nonlinear response of atoms to an optical pumping pulse. With this technique the atomic density distribution can be resolved with a point spread function FWHM of 32(4) nm and a localization precision below 1 nm. The short optical pumping pulse of 1.4 $\mu$s enables us to resolve fast atomic dynamics within a single lattice site. A byproduct of our scheme is the emergence of moir\'{e} patterns on the atomic cloud, which we show to be immensely magnified images of the atomic density in the lattice. Our work represents a general approach to accessing the physics of cold atoms at the nanometer scale, and can be extended to higher dimensional lattices and bulk systems for a variety of atomic and molecular species.