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arXiv:2305.16228 · Science Advances

Spatial adiabatic passage of ultracold atoms in optical tweezers

Yanay Florshaim, Elad Zohar, David Zeev Koplovich, Ilan Meltzer, Rafi Weill, Jonathan Nemirovsky, Amir Stern, Yoav Sagi

Published Oct 2, 2024• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Coherent manipulation of matter waves, a distinctive hallmark of quantum mechanics, is fundamental to modern quantum technologies. Spatial adiabatic passage (SAP) is a prime example of this phenomenon, where a wave packet is transferred between two uncoupled localized modes by adjusting the tunneling coupling to an intermediate third mode in a counterintuitive sequence. Although this concept was introduced over two decades ago, its observation was previously limited to electromagnetic waves. In this study, we demonstrate this quantum interference effect using massive particles that tunnel between three micro-optical traps ("optical tweezers"). We begin by preparing ultracold fermionic atoms in low vibrational eigenstates of one trap, followed by manipulating the distance between the traps to execute the SAP protocol. We observe a smooth and high-efficiency transfer of atoms between the two outer traps, with a very low population remaining in the central trap. These findings open possibilities for advanced control schemes in optical tweezer array platforms.

DOI
10.1126/sciadv.adl1220

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Coherent manipulation of matter waves, a distinctive hallmark of quantum mechanics, is fundamental to modern quantum technologies. Spatial adiabatic passage (SAP) is a prime example of this phenomenon, where a wave packet is transferred between two uncoupled localized modes by adjusting the tunneling coupling to an intermediate third mode in a counterintuitive sequence. Although this concept was introduced over two decades ago, its observation was previously limited to electromagnetic waves. In this study, we demonstrate this quantum interference effect using massive particles that tunnel between three micro-optical traps ("optical tweezers"). We begin by preparing ultracold fermionic atoms in low vibrational eigenstates of one trap, followed by manipulating the distance between the traps to execute the SAP protocol. We observe a smooth and high-efficiency transfer of atoms between the two outer traps, with a very low population remaining in the central trap. These findings open possibilities for advanced control schemes in optical tweezer array platforms.
Quantum interference lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. By utilizing destructive interference, it is possible to transfer a physical object between two states without populating an intermediate state which is necessary to connect the initial and final states. A famous application is a technique of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage, where atomic internal states can be transfered with high efficiency regardless of lossy intermediate states. One interesting situation is a case where the initial and final states are spatially well separated. Quantum mechanics allows a particle to move without practical possibility of being found at the intermediate area. Here we demonstrate this spatial adiabatic passage with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Key to this is the existence of dark eigenstates forming a flat energy band, with effective transfer between two sublattices being observed. This work sheds light on a study of coherent control of trapped cold atoms.
Three-level atom optics is introduced as a simple, efficient, and robust method to coherently manipulate and transport neutral atoms. The tunneling interaction among three trapped states allows us to realize the spatial analog of the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage, coherent population trapping, and electromagnetically induced transparency techniques and offers a wide range of possible applications. We investigate an implementation in optical microtrap arrays and show that under realistic parameters the coherent manipulation and transfer of neutral atoms among dipole traps could be realized in the millisecond range.
We propose here to make use of the spatial adiabatic passage technique, i.e., the matter wave analogue of the well known stimulated Raman adiabatic passage technique. We discuss the filtering of the vibrational states of a cold atom in an optical trap, by chaining this trap with two empty ones and controlling adiabatically the tunnelling. Matter wave filtering is performed by selectively transferring the population of the highest populated vibrational state to the most distant trap while the population of the rest of the states remains in the initial trap.
We use laser induced adiabatic passage to coherently manipulate the atomic wave packets resulting from subrecoil laser cooling in one, two, and three dimensions by velocity selective coherent population trapping. Using metastable helium atoms, we demonstrate adiabatic transfer into a single wave packet or into two coherent wave packets, while retaining the subrecoil momentum dispersion of the initial wave packets. The efficiency of the transfer is nearly perfect in one and two dimensions, and of the order of 75% in three dimensions. To a large extent, the direction of the momentum and the internal state of the atoms described by each of the final wave packets can be chosen at will.
We report on an experimental demonstration of light transfer in an engineered triple-well optical waveguide structure which provides a classic analog of coherent tunneling by adiabatic passage (CTAP) recently proposed for coherent transport in space of neutral atoms or electrons among tunneling-coupled optical traps or quantum wells [A. D. Greentree et al., Phys. Rev. B 70, 235317 (2004); K. Eckert et al., Phys. Rev. A 70, 023606 (2004)]. The direct visualization of CTAP wave-packet dynamics enabled by our simple optical system clearly shows that in the counterintuitive passage scheme light waves tunnel between the two outer wells without appreciable excitation of the middle well.
Optical tweezer arrays trapping ultracold atoms and molecules are a versatile quantum science platform with broad impact in quantum simulation, quantum computation, and quantum metrology. The polarization dependence of anisotropic vector and tensor light shifts offers a degree of freedom for precise quantum state engineering of trapped particles. Similarly, state-selective operations depend on the polarization of the addressing light through the atom--light coupling strength. Yet, methods for controlling the polarization of individual tweezers or local addressing beams remain an experimental challenge. Here, we demonstrate independent, site-resolved linear polarization rotation across an optical tweezer array by exploiting the local birefringence tunability of a spatial light modulator. Applying this capability to an array of 88Sr^{88}\rm{Sr}88Sr atoms, we homogenize differential light shifts imparted by the 813-nm tweezers to the narrow 1S0↔3P1{^1{\rm S}_0}\leftrightarrow{^3{\rm P}_1}1S0​↔3P1​ transition, enabling sideband cooling under a magic-angle condition. Furthermore, we show dynamic transport of trapped atoms across distinct polarization zones with high survival and preserved coherence. Finally, we characterize tweezer polarization noise and demonstrate closed-loop stabilization referenced to the atomic transition frequency, reaching mrad-level stability. Our work establishes a technique for manipulating polarization-sensitive atomic and molecular transitions in tweezer architectures, with immediate applications to optical tweezer clocks and multi-zone quantum processors.