Imaging Spinor Bose Gasses Using Off-Axis Holography

TL;DR

This paper presents a new non-invasive imaging method using spin-dependent off-axis holography to achieve real-time, in-situ spin and density imaging of spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates with minimal disturbance.

Contribution

The authors develop and demonstrate a novel holographic imaging technique that captures spin- and density-resolved information of BECs using dual polarization components and interference patterns.

Findings

Enables sub-millisecond in-situ imaging of spinor BECs.

Sensitive to the atomic quantization axis under various magnetic fields.

Provides minimally invasive, spin- and density-resolved phase and amplitude data.

Abstract

We introduce a novel, non-invasive imaging technique based on spin-dependent off-axis holography (SOAH) for spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Utilizing a dual reference beam strategy, this method records two orthogonal circular polarization components of a single probe beam. The circular birefringence of spin-polarized atoms induces differing complex phase shifts in the polarization components of the light, which are reconstructed from the interference patterns captured on camera. Our approach enables spin- and density-resolved imaging of both phase and amplitude information \emph{in-situ} on a sub-millisecond time scale with minimal disturbance to the condensate. We explore the technique's efficacy under various background static fields, demonstrating its sensitivity to the quantization axis of the atoms and confirming its effectiveness.