Ultracold quantum gases offer unique possibilities to study interacting many-body quantum systems. Probing and manipulating such systems with ever increasing degree of control requires novel experimental techniques. Scanning electron microscopy is a high resolution technique which can be used for in situ imaging, single site addressing in optical lattices and precision density engineering. Here, we review recent advances and achievements obtained with this technique and discuss future perspectives.
Ultracold quantum gases offer unique possibilities to study interacting many-body quantum systems. Probing and manipulating such systems with ever increasing degree of control requires novel experimental techniques. Scanning electron microscopy is a high resolution technique which can be used for in situ imaging, single site addressing in optical lattices and precision density engineering. Here, we review recent advances and achievements obtained with this technique and discuss future perspectives.
Our knowledge on ultracold quantum gases is strongly influenced by our ability to probe these objects. In situ imaging combined with single atom sensitivity is an especially appealing scenario as it can provide direct information on the structure and the correlations of such systems. For a precise characterization a high spatial resolution is mandatory. In particular, the perspective to study quantum gases in optical lattices makes a resolution well below one micrometer highly desirable. Here, we report on a novel microscopy technique which is based on scanning electron microscopy and allows for the detection of single atoms inside a quantum gas with a spatial resolution of better than 150 nm. Imaging a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional optical lattice with 600 nm period we demonstrate single site addressability in a sub-um optical lattice. The technique offers exciting possibilities for the preparation, manipulation and analysis of quantum gases.
We propose a new technique for the detection of single atoms in ultracold quantum gases. The technique is based on scanning electron microscopy and employs the electron impact ionization of trapped atoms with a focused electron probe. Subsequent detection of the resulting ions allows for the reconstruction of the atom's position. This technique is expected to achieve a much better spatial resolution compared to any optical detection method. In combination with the sensitivity to single atoms, it makes new in situ measurements of atomic correlations possible. The detection principle is also well suited for the addressing of individual sites in optical lattices.
We propose a versatile experimental probe for cold atomic gases analogous to the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in condensed matter. This probe uses the coherent coupling of a single particle to the system. Depending on the measurement sequence, our probe allows us to obtain either the local density and spatial density correlations, with a resolution on the nanometer scale, or the single particle correlation function in real time. We discuss applications of this scheme to the various possible phases for a two dimensional Hubbard system of fermions in an optical lattice.
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide an extremely clean and controllable setting to explore quantum many-body phases of matter. Here we give a brief review of the strong-correlation physics that has been realized using such ultracold atoms in optical lattices ranging from the realization of Hubbard models to studies of quantum magnetism and the detection of single atoms with lattice site resolution. All this has opened up fundamentally new opportunities for the investigation of quantum many-body systems. Introduction Over the past years, ultracold atoms in optical lattices have emerged as versatile new systems to explore the physics of quantum many-body systems. On the one hand, they can be helpful in gaining a better understanding of known phases of matter and their dynamical behavior; on the other hand, they allow one to realize completely novel quantum systems that have not been studied before in nature [1, 2, 3]. Commonly, the approach of exploring quantum many-body systems in such a way is referred to as “quantum simulations.” Examples of some of the first strongly interacting many-body phases that have been realized both in lattices and in the continuum include the quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator [4, 5, 6], fermionic Mott insulators [7, 8], the achievement of a Tonks- Girardeau gas [9, 10], and the realization of the Bose-Einsten condensate (BEC)– Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) crossover (see also Chapter 12) in Fermi gas mixture [11] using Feshbach resonances [12]. In almost all of these experiments, detection was limited to time-of-flight imaging or more refined derived techniques that mainly characterized the momentum distribution of the quantum gas [2]. For several years, researchers in the field have therefore aspired to employ in situ single-particle detection methods for the analysis of ultracold quantum gases. Only recently has it become possible to implement such imaging techniques, marking a milestone for the characterization and manipulation of ultracold quantum gases [13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. In our discussion, we will focus on one of the most successful of these techniques based on high-resolution fluorescence imaging. Despite being a rather new technique, such quantum gas microscopy has already proven to be an enabling technology for probing and manipulating quantum many-body systems. For the first time, controllable and strongly interacting many-body systems, as realized with ultracold atoms, could be observed on a local scale [17, 16].
One exciting progress in recent cold atom experiments is the development of high resolution, in situ imaging techniques for atomic quantum gases [1-3]. These new powerful tools provide detailed information on the distribution of atoms in a trap with resolution approaching the level of single atom and even single lattice site, and complement the well developed time-of-flight method that probes the system in momentum space. In a condensed matter analogy, this technique is equivalent to locating electrons of a material in a snap shot. In situ imaging has offered a new powerful tool to study atomic gases and inspired many new research directions and ideas. In this chapter, we will describe the experimental setup of in situ absorption imaging, observables that can be extracted from the images, and new physics that can be explored with this technique.
One of the most active areas in atomic, molecular and optical physics is the use of ultracold atomic gases in optical lattices to simulate the behaviour of electrons in condensed matter systems. The larger mass, longer length scale, and tuneable interactions in these systems allow the dynamics of atoms moving in these systems to be followed in real time, and resonant light scattering by the atoms allows this motion to be probed on a microscopic scale using site-resolved imaging. This book reviews the physics of Hubbard-type models for both bosons and fermions in an optical lattice, which give rise to a rich variety of insulating and conducting phases depending on the lattice properties and interparticle interactions. It also discusses the effect of disorder on the transport of atoms in these models, and the recently discovered phenomenon of many-body localization. It presents several examples of experiments using both density and momentum imaging and quantum gas microscopy to study the motion of atoms in optical lattices. These illustrate the power and flexibility of ultracold-lattice analogues for exploring exotic states of matter at an unprecedented level of precision.