Apparatus for producing single strontium atoms in an optical tweezer array

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental setup for creating and imaging single strontium atoms in optical tweezers, achieving high loading rates and long atom lifetimes, with applications in quantum technologies.

Contribution

The authors develop a stable, high-rate loading system for strontium atoms in optical tweezers using permanent magnets and advanced cooling techniques, enabling scalable quantum experiments.

Findings

Achieved a loading rate of up to 10^8 s^-1 for strontium atoms.

Trapped and imaged single atoms with a lifetime of 2.5 minutes.

Characterized the tweezer array using release and recapture methods.

Abstract

We outline an experimental setup for efficiently preparing a tweezer array of $^{88}$Sr atoms. Our setup uses permanent magnets to maintain a steady-state two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (MOT) which results in a loading rate of up to $10^{8}$ s$^{-1}$ at 5 mK for the three-dimensional blue MOT. This enables us to trap $2\times10^{6}$ $^{88}$Sr atoms at 2 $\mu$K in a narrow-line red MOT with the $^{1}$S$_{0}$ $\rightarrow$ $^{3}$P$_{1}$ intercombination transition at 689 nm. With the Sisyphus cooling and pairwise loss processes, single atoms are trapped and imaged in 813 nm optical tweezers, exhibiting a lifetime of 2.5 minutes. We further investigate the survival fraction of a single atom in the tweezers and characterize the optical tweezer array using a release and recapture technique. Our platform paves the way for potential applications in atomic clocks, precision measurements, and quantum simulations.