Cavity-enhanced optical lattices for scaling neutral atom quantum technologies to higher qubit numbers

TL;DR

This paper presents a cavity-enhanced optical lattice system that significantly increases the number of ultracold atoms that can be trapped, with high stability and resolution, advancing neutral atom quantum technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a cavity-based method to create large, stable 2D optical lattices for ultracold atoms, enabling scalable quantum experiments.

Findings

Lattices created with large mode waists of 489 μm.

Trap lifetimes of 18 and 59 seconds for ground-band and overall.

Lattice stability at MHz and 0.1% levels over long periods.

Abstract

We demonstrate a cavity-based solution to scale up experiments with ultracold atoms in optical lattices by an order of magnitude over state-of-the-art free space lattices. Our two-dimensional optical lattices are created by power enhancement cavities with large mode waists of 489(8) $\mu$m and allow us to trap ultracold strontium atoms at a lattice depth of 60 $\mu$K by using only 80 mW of input light per cavity axis. We characterize these lattices using high-resolution clock spectroscopy and resolve carrier transitions between different vibrational levels. With these spectral features, we locally measure the lattice potential envelope and the sample temperature with a spatial resolution limited only by the optical resolution of the imaging system. The measured ground-band and trap lifetimes are 18(3) s and 59(2) s, respectively, and the lattice frequency (depth) is long-term stable on the MHz (0.1\%) level. Our results show that large, deep, and stable two-dimensional cavity-enhanced lattices can be created at any wavelength and can be used to scale up neutral-atom-based quantum simulators, quantum computers, sensors, and optical lattice clocks.