Efficient single-atom transfer from an optical conveyor belt to a tightly confined optical tweezer

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for efficiently transferring single atoms from an optical conveyor belt to a tightly confined optical tweezer, achieving high loading probability and enabling advanced quantum experiments.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a real-time feedback technique that significantly improves single-atom loading efficiency from a conveyor belt to a tweezer in cavity-based systems.

Findings

Achieved 77.6% single-atom loading probability.

Implemented real-time feedback control for atom number stabilization.

Enabled deterministic single-atom loading in hybrid photonic-atom setups.

Abstract

Efficient loading of single atoms into tightly confined traps is crucial for advancing quantum information processing and exploring atom-photon interactions. However, directly loading atoms from a magneto-optical trap (MOT) into static tweezers in cavity-based systems and hybrid atom-photon interfaces remains a challenge. Here, we demonstrate atom loading in a tightly confined optical tweezer 0.6mm away from MOT by an optical conveyor belt. By employing real-time feedback control of the atom number in the overlapping region between the conveyor belt and the tweezer, we enhance a single-atom loading probability to 77.6%. Our technique offers a versatile solution for deterministic single-atom loading in various experimental settings and paves the way for diverse applications based on hybrid photonic-atom structures.