High-Fidelity, Low-Loss State Detection of Alkali-Metal Atoms in Optical Tweezer Traps

TL;DR

This paper presents a highly accurate and low-loss method for detecting the hyperfine states of cesium atoms in optical tweezers, achieving record fidelity without complex setups.

Contribution

It introduces a simple probe technique that significantly improves detection fidelity and reduces atom loss compared to previous methods.

Findings

Detection fidelity of 99.91% achieved.

Atom loss during detection is only 0.9%.

Method eliminates depumping caused by trap laser.

Abstract

We demonstrate discrimination of ground-state hyperfine manifolds of a cesium atom in an optical tweezer using a simple probe beam with 99.91(2)% detection fidelity and 0.9(2)% detection-driven loss of bright state atoms. Our detection infidelity of 0.09(2)% is an order of magnitude better than previously published low-loss readout results for alkali-metal atoms in optical tweezers. Our low atom loss and high-fidelity state detection eliminates the extra depumping mechanism due to population transfer between excited-state sublevels through V-type stimulated Raman transitions caused by the trap laser when the probe laser is present. In this work, complex optical systems and stringent vacuum pressures are not required.