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arXiv:1708.03296 · Physical Review A

Motional-ground-state cooling outside the Lamb-Dicke regime

Yichao Yu, Nicholas R. Hutzler, Jessie T. Zhang, Lee R. Liu, Jonathan D. Hood, Till Rosenband, Kang-Kuen Ni

Published Jun 28, 2018• 45 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report Raman sideband cooling of a single sodium atom to its three-dimensional motional ground state in an optical tweezer. Despite a large Lamb-Dicke parameter, high initial temperature, and large differential light shifts between the excited state and the ground state, we achieve a ground-state population of 93.5(7)% after 53 ms of cooling. Our technique includes addressing high-order sidebands, where several motional quanta are removed by a single laser pulse, and fast modulation of the optical tweezer intensity. We demonstrate that Raman sideband cooling to the three-dimensional motional ground state is possible, even without tight confinement and low initial temperature.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.97.063423

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We report Raman sideband cooling of a single sodium atom to its three-dimensional motional ground state in an optical tweezer. Despite a large Lamb-Dicke parameter, high initial temperature, and large differential light shifts between the excited state and the ground state, we achieve a ground-state population of 93.5(7)% after 53 ms of cooling. Our technique includes addressing high-order sidebands, where several motional quanta are removed by a single laser pulse, and fast modulation of the optical tweezer intensity. We demonstrate that Raman sideband cooling to the three-dimensional motional ground state is possible, even without tight confinement and low initial temperature.
Abstract We report simultaneous Raman sideband cooling of a single 87Rb atom and a single 133Cs atom held in separate optical tweezers at 814 nm and 938 nm, respectively. Starting from outside the Lamb-Dicke regime, after 45 ms of cooling we measure probabilities to occupy the three-dimensional motional ground state of 0.8 6 − 0.04 + 0.03 for Rb and 0.9 5 − 0.04 + 0.03 for Cs. Our setup overlaps the Raman laser beams used to cool Rb and Cs, reducing hardware requirements by sharing equipment along the same beam path. The cooling protocol is scalable, and we demonstrate cooling of single Rb atoms in an array of four tweezers. After motional ground-state cooling, a 938 nm tweezer is translated to overlap with a 814 nm tweezer so that a single Rb and a single Cs atom can be transferred into a common 1064 nm trap. By minimising the heating during the merging and transfer, we prepare the atoms in the relative motional ground state with an efficiency of 0.8 1 − 0.08 + 0.08 . This is a crucial step towards the formation of single RbCs molecules confined in optical tweezer arrays.
We clarify the optimal conditions for the protocol of Raman sideband cooling (RSC) of a single atom confined with a tightly focused far-off-resonant optical dipole trap (optical tweezers). The protocol ultimately pursues cooling to a three-dimensional ground state of the confining potential. We show that the RSC protocol has to fulfill a set of critical requirements for the parameters of cooling beams and the excitation geometry to be effective in a most general three-dimensional configuration and for an atom having initial temperature between the recoil and the Doppler bounds. We perform a numerical simulation of the Raman passage for an example of an 85Rb^{85}\mathrm{Rb}85Rb atom taking into account the full level structure and all possible transition channels.
It was recently shown that a single atom can efficiently scatter photons out of a focused coherent light beam [1, 2, 3]. The scattering probability is strongly dependent on a thermal motion of the atom and can be maximized if the atom is well localized at a focus. To achieve that, we implement a Raman sideband cooling technique that is commonly used in ion traps [4]. Our trap, formed by focused Gaussian light beam at 980nm, has characteristic frequencies of ντ= 55 kHz and νl= 7 kHz corresponding to transverse and longitudinal confinements. A single87Rb atom is loaded into the trap from an optical molasses. Two Raman beams couple the motional states of |F = 2〉 and |F = 1〉 manifolds with a Lamb-Dicke parameter η = 0.084 (Figure 1). The Raman beams are oriented such that momentum transfer occurs only along the strong confinement of the trap with ντ= 55 kHz. The cooling sequence consists of following steps: (1) initial preparation of the atom in |F = 2,mF= −2〉 Zeeman state, (2) Raman transfer between the motional states |F = 2,mF= −2,N〉 and |F = 1,mF= −1,N − 1〉. (3) recycling the atomic population back to |F = 2,mF= −2〉 state via an optical pulse resonant to |5P3/2, F = 2〉 state thus removing a phonon via spontaneous emission.
We report cooling of a single neutral atom to its three-dimensional vibrational ground state in an optical tweezer.After employing Raman sideband cooling for tens of milliseconds, we measure via sideband spectroscopy a three-dimensional ground-state occupation of about 90%.We further observe coherent control of the spin and motional state of the trapped atom.Our demonstration shows that an optical tweezer, formed simply by a tightly focused beam of light, creates sufficient confinement for efficient sideband cooling.This source of ground-state neutral atoms will be instrumental in numerous quantum simulation and logic applications that require a versatile platform for storing and manipulating ultracold single neutral atoms.For example, these results will improve current optical-tweezer experiments studying atom-photon coupling and Rydberg quantum logic gates, and could provide new opportunities such as rapid production of single dipolar molecules or quantum simulation in tweezer arrays.
We combine near-deterministic preparation of a single atom with Raman sideband cooling, to create a push-button mechanism to prepare a single atom in the motional ground state of tightly focused optical tweezers. In the two-dimensional (2D) radial plane, we achieve a large ground-state fidelity for the entire procedure (loading and cooling) of $\ensuremath{\sim}0.73$, while the ground-state occupancy is $\ensuremath{\sim}0.88$ for realizations with a single atom present. For 1D axial cooling, we attain a ground-state fraction of $\ensuremath{\sim}0.52$. The combined 3D cooling provides a ground-state population of $\ensuremath{\sim}0.11$. Our Raman sideband cooling variation is indifferent to magnetic field fluctuations, allowing widespread unshielded experimental implementations. Our work provides a pathway towards a range of coherent few-body experiments.