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arXiv:0906.1765 · Physical Review A

Nondestructive cavity QED probe of Bloch oscillations in a gas of ultracold atoms

Brandon M. Peden, D. Meiser, Maria Luisa Chiofalo, Murray Holland

Published Oct 5, 2009• 30 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We describe a scheme for probing a gas of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice and moving in the presence of an external potential. The probe is nondestructive and uses the existing lattice fields as the measurement device. Two counterpropagating cavity fields simultaneously set up a conservative lattice potential and a weak quantum probe of the atomic motion. Balanced heterodyne detection of the probe field at the cavity output along with integration in time and across the atomic cloud yield information about the atomic dynamics in a single run. The scheme is applied to a measurement of the Bloch oscillation frequency for atoms moving in the presence of the local gravitational potential. Signal-to-noise ratios are estimated to be as high as ${10}^{4}$.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.80.043803

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We describe a scheme for probing a gas of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice and moving in the presence of an external potential. The probe is nondestructive and uses the existing lattice fields as the measurement device. Two counterpropagating cavity fields simultaneously set up a conservative lattice potential and a weak quantum probe of the atomic motion. Balanced heterodyne detection of the probe field at the cavity output along with integration in time and across the atomic cloud yield information about the atomic dynamics in a single run. The scheme is applied to a measurement of the Bloch oscillation frequency for atoms moving in the presence of the local gravitational potential. Signal-to-noise ratios are estimated to be as high as 104{10}^{4}104.
We propose and demonstrate real-time subwavelength cavity QED measurements of the spatial distribution of atoms in an optical lattice. Atoms initially confined in one ``trap'' standing wave of an optical cavity mode are probed with a second ``probe'' standing wave. With frequencies offset by one free spectral range, the nodes of the trap fall on the antinodes of the probe in the $\ensuremath{\approx}{10}^{4}$ lattice sites around the center of the cavity. This lattice site independent atom-cavity coupling enables high sensitivity detection of atom dynamics even with atoms spread over many lattice sites. To demonstrate, we measure the temperature of $20--70\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$ atom ensembles in $<10\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$ by monitoring their expansion by $\ensuremath{\approx}100$ nm after sudden release from the trap lattice. Atom-cavity coupling imprints the atom dynamics on the probe transmission. The technique will enable improved nondestructive detection of Bloch oscillations and other atom dynamics in optical lattices.
Abstract We propose a quantum gas microscope for ultracold atoms that enables nondestructive atom detection, thus evading higher-band excitation and change of the internal degrees of freedom. We show that photon absorption of a probe beam cannot be ignored even in dispersive detection to obtain a signal-to-noise ratio greater than unity because of the shot noise of the probe beam under a standard measurement condition. The first scheme we consider for the nondestructive detection, applicable to an atom that has an electronic ground state without spin degrees of freedom, is to utilize a magic-wavelength condition of the optical lattice for the transition for probing. The second is based on the dispersive Faraday effect and squeezed quantum noise and is applicable to an atom with spins in the ground state. In this second scheme, a scanning microscope is adopted to exploit the squeezed state and reduce the effective losses. Application to ultracold ytterbium atoms is discussed.
This dissertation details the construction of a neutral ultracold atom system along with one completed experiment and one future experiment. This systems contains a two-stage slowing/cooling scheme with a Zeeman slower and a magneto-optical trap (MOT), as well as an in-vacuum optical cavity. The optical cavity was specially designed for precision measurement experiments. When near resonance atoms are present in the cavity, they cause a phase shift in the light. This enables use of the cavity light transmission as a minimally invasive feedback for information on the presence of atoms in the cavity. We look at this atom cavity interaction in two regimes: a deep lattice and a shallow lattice. Atoms confined to a deep optical lattice are constrained to thousands of individual wells. Any feedback on the lattice from motion of atoms in a single well is amplified by thousands due to this repetition. We exploit this deep lattice uniformity to measure atomic motion immediately after release from the deep lattice using another very shallow probe lattice. The feedback from the atomic motion on the probe lattice cavity transmission is used to measure the atomic sample’s original temperature without losing the atoms. We measure the sample's temperature in both the axial and radial direction, with the axial measurement taking <10 mu<10~\\mu<10 mus with the ability to recapture 7575\\%75 of the atoms back into the lattice. Atoms in a shallow lattice have wavefunctions spread out across multiple lattice cites. This enables them to undergo a process called Bloch oscillations, which requires a periodic potential plus a uniform force (gravity). I perform a simulation of the coupled atom and lattice distributions to optimize our experimental realization of the system. The atomic oscillations due to gravity imprint their oscillation frequency on the transmission of cavity light, which enables us to measure the force on the atoms which is directly proportional to the frequency. We plan on using this feature to perform a precision measurement on our atoms to look for ultralight dark matter. I estimate our limits on this type of dark matter, and discuss the future of this experiment.
The work presented in this thesis is dedicated to studies of stabilization of Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in a one-dimensional vertical optical lattice under the influence of the gravitational force. The atoms simultaneously interact with both the lattice potential and a unidirectionally pumped optical ring cavity whose vertical arm is collinear with the optical lattice. In the proposed scheme, the atoms not only exchange photons between the optical lattice laser beams, but also collectively scatter light from the pump into the reverse cavity mode. The initial investigation of the system without the cavity allows understanding of the importance of the perfectly adiabatic atomic motion in the observation of stable Bloch oscillations and how easily the adiabaticity can be broken due to a very fast switch-on of the lattice or its amplitude and phase modulation. Under certain parameter regimes, adding the ring cavity to the system provides a surprisingly positive feedback on the atomic dynamics. It is found that, while acting back on the atoms, the cavity field establishes a mode-locking mechanism which assists adiabatic rapid passages between adjacent momentum states. Thus, the cavity-induced feedback mechanism enforces the adiabaticity of the process and reveals a regime where the Bloch oscillations are self-synchronized for long times. This stabilization technique is shown to steer the atoms to the lowest Bloch band preventing the problem of interband tunneling. A demonstration is also made of the ability of the system to stabilize the atomic Bloch oscillations against technical amplitude or phase noise and even suppress dephasing due to the atom-atom interactions. Furthermore, the response of the system to the atomic motion is generated in the form of perfectly detectable periodic bursts of light emitted into the counter-propagating cavity mode. Thus, the system offers a continuous and reliable non-destructive method to monitor the Bloch oscillations dynamics without perturbing their periodicity by detecting the scattered light transmitted through the cavity. All features studied in this work may be crucial for future improvements of the design of atomic gravimeters based on recording Bloch oscillations.
A quantum particle moving in a periodic potential, with periodicity d, when acted by an external constant force F undergoes the dynamical phenomenon of Bloch-Zener oscillations (BZO). We investigate BZO of a neutral cold atom in an optical cavity pumped by a laser. We find that the single mode electromagnetic field of the optical cavity is affected by the atomic dynamics and propose the idea that a measurement of the electromagnetic field leaking out of the cavity will reflect the BZO frequency WB = Fd/h, and can be used for a precision measurement of F. The motivation for such a study comes from the fact that if the force F is gravity, then one can probe gravitational forces on sub-millimeter scales since the size of these systems are generally a few hundreds of microns. Such a study can be used to detect deviations from Newtonian gravity at short range proposed by some theories beyond the standard model of particle physics.
We present a new technique for stabilizing and monitoring Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice under the action of a constant external force. In the proposed scheme, the atoms also interact with a unidirectionally pumped optical ring cavity whose one arm is collinear with the optical lattice. For weak collective coupling, Bloch oscillations dominate over the collective atomic recoil lasing instability and develop a synchronized regime in which the atoms periodically exchange momentum with the cavity field.