Microscopic control and detection of ultracold strontium in optical-tweezer arrays

TL;DR

This paper presents advanced microscopic control and detection techniques for ultracold strontium atoms in optical-tweezer arrays, enabling precise manipulation and imaging crucial for quantum information and many-body physics.

Contribution

It introduces new tools for controlling and imaging strontium atoms at the single-atom level in optical tweezers, extending capabilities to more complex atomic species.

Findings

Successful single-atom loading into sub-wavelength optical tweezers

Light-shift free control of narrow-linewidth transitions

High-fidelity nondestructive imaging of single atoms

Abstract

We demonstrate a set of tools for microscopic control of neutral strontium atoms. We report single-atom loading into an array of sub-wavelength scale optical tweezers, light-shift free control of a narrow-linewidth optical transition, three-dimensional ground-state cooling, and high-fidelity nondestructive imaging of single atoms on sub-wavelength spatial scales. Extending the microscopic control currently achievable in single-valence-electron atoms to species with more complex internal structure, like strontium, unlocks a wealth of opportunities in quantum information science, including tweezer-based metrology, new quantum computing architectures, and new paths to low-entropy many-body physics.