Optical Phase Aberration Correction with an Ultracold Quantum Gas

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for correcting optical aberrations in ultracold quantum gas experiments by using the quantum gas itself as a wavefront sensor, achieving high precision and practical correction of otherwise hard-to-measure aberrations.

Contribution

The work demonstrates a new technique that employs ultracold quantum gases as wavefront sensors for optical aberration correction, enabling correction of aberrations introduced by vacuum windows.

Findings

Achieved root-mean-square correction precision of 0.01λ.

Reduced optical aberrations as confirmed by trap frequency measurements.

Applicable to small tweezer sizes below imaging resolution.

Abstract

We present an optical aberration correction technique for ultracold quantum gas experiments which directly utilizes the quantum gas as a wavefront sensor. The direct use of the quantum gas enables correcting aberrations that are otherwise impractical to measure, e.g. introduced by vacuum windows. We report a root-mean-square precision and accuracy of 0.01{\lambda} and 0.03{\lambda}, respectively, and also show independently the reduction of aberrations through measurement of the trap frequency of our optical tweezer. These improvements were achieved for a tweezer size that is well below our imaging resolution. The present work is in particular intended to serve as a tutorial for experimentalists interested in implementing similar methods in their experiment.