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arXiv:2307.04689 · Physical Review Letters

Trapping and Imaging Single Dysprosium Atoms in Optical Tweezer Arrays

Damien Bloch, Britton Hofer, Sam R. Cohen, Antoine Browaeys, Igor Ferrier-Barbut

Published Nov 14, 2023• 26 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report the preparation and observation of single atoms of dysprosium in arrays of optical tweezers with a wavelength of 532 nm, imaged on the intercombination line at 626 nm. We use the anisotropic light shift specific to lanthanides and in particular a large difference in tensor and vector polarizabilities between the ground and excited states to tune the differential light shift and produce tweezers in near-magic or magic polarization. This allows us to find a regime where single atoms can be trapped and imaged. Using the tweezer array toolbox to manipulate lanthanides will open new research directions for quantum physics studies by taking advantage of their rich spectrum, large spin, and magnetic dipole moment.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.131.203401

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We report the preparation and observation of single atoms of dysprosium in arrays of optical tweezers with a wavelength of 532 nm, imaged on the intercombination line at 626 nm. We use the anisotropic light shift specific to lanthanides and in particular a large difference in tensor and vector polarizabilities between the ground and excited states to tune the differential light shift and produce tweezers in near-magic or magic polarization. This allows us to find a regime where single atoms can be trapped and imaged. Using the tweezer array toolbox to manipulate lanthanides will open new research directions for quantum physics studies by taking advantage of their rich spectrum, large spin, and magnetic dipole moment.
Open-shell lanthanide atoms, and dysprosium in particular, combine a large ground-state angular momentum with dense electronic spectra, making their dynamical polarizability strongly dependent on wavelength and internal state, and therefore challenging to calculate and characterize experimentally. This issue has become especially relevant with the recent development of single-atom trapping of dysprosium in optical-tweezer arrays, where precise knowledge of the polarizability is needed to design optimized trapping architectures. Here, we exploit the strong spin-dependent light shift near the J′=J−1J'=J-1J′=J−1 intercombination line at 530.306 nm to determine the background scalar and vector polarizabilities of 162^{162}162Dy in its ground state near this wavelength. Our measurements quantitatively agree with atomic-structure calculations and provide new insight into the contributions of nearby transitions in a spectral region relevant to emerging dysprosium tweezer platforms.
We perform narrowline cooling of single dysprosium atoms trapped in a 1D optical tweezers array, employing the narrow single-photon transition at 741 nm. At the trapping wavelength of 532 nm, the excited state is less trapped than the ground state. To obtain efficient cooling performances, we chirp the frequency of the cooling beam to subsequently address the red sidebands of different motional states. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the cooling protocol through Raman thermometry, which we characterize for our experimental conditions. We obtain an array of 75 atoms close to the motional ground state in the radial direction of the tweezers. Our results demonstrate the possibility to manipulate the motional degree of freedom of dysprosium in optical tweezers arrays, a key ingredient to exploit the potential of lanthanide-based tweezers platforms for quantum science.
We report experimental measurements of the dynamical polarizability of dysprosium, at a wavelength of 532 nm. We measure all three components (scalar, vector, and tensor) of the anisotropic polarizability for the ground and the excited manifolds of the intercombination transition of Dy at 626 nm. The apparatus on which the measurements are performed is presented. We obtain with this setup imaging of single Dy atoms with fidelity above 99% and losses below 2.5% induced by imaging. We then describe the methods used to extract the polarizability. In particular, we combine a measurement of trap frequency and trap depth on single atoms in optical tweezers, allowing us to obtain a measurement of the ground-state polarizability free of errors in trap waist calibration. The obtained values give a magic condition between two Zeeman states in the ground and excited manifolds, which is used to image single atoms in optical tweezer arrays. The scalar polarizability of the ground state is in disagreement with theoretical expectations, calling for future investigations to resolve the discrepancy.
Engineering controllable, strongly interacting many-body quantum systems is at the frontier of quantum simulation and quantum information processing. Arrays of laser-cooled neutral atoms in optical tweezers have emerged as a promising platform because of their flexibility and the potential for strong interactions via Rydberg states. Existing neutral atom array experiments utilize alkali atoms, but alkaline-earth atoms offer many advantages in terms of coherence and control, and also open the door to new applications in precision measurement and time keeping. In this Letter, we present a technique to trap individual alkaline-earth-like ytterbium (Yb) atoms in optical tweezer arrays. The narrow ^{1}S_{0}-^{3}P_{1} intercombination line is used for both cooling and imaging in a magic-wavelength optical tweezer at 532 nm. The low Doppler temperature allows for imaging near the saturation intensity, resulting in a very high atom detection fidelity. We demonstrate the imaging fidelity concretely by observing rare (<1 in 10^{4} images) spontaneous quantum jumps into and out of a metastable state. We also demonstrate stochastic loading of atoms into a two-dimensional, 144-site tweezer array. This platform will enable advances in quantum information processing, quantum simulation, and precision measurement. The demonstrated narrow-line Doppler imaging may also be applied in tweezer arrays or quantum gas microscopes using other atoms with similar transitions, such as erbium and dysprosium.
Efficient trapping and detection of single atoms in optical tweezers are important for realizing atom arrays, a promising platform for quantum simulation and quantum information processing. However, the scaling up of atom arrays can be impeded by detrimental light shifts induced by the tweezer trap, making it challenging to cool and image single atoms. Here, we report an order-of-magnitude increase in the scalability of 23Na^{23}\mathrm{Na}23Na atom arrays by using D1{D}_{1}D1​ magic wavelength tweezers to reduce the required tweezer power per trap. D1{D}_{1}D1​ magic wavelengths have been previously predicted to exist for all the alkali atoms but are not yet observed to date. We first experimentally confirm a D1{D}_{1}D1​ magic wavelength that is predicted to lie at 615.87 nm, which we then use to trap and image single atoms without having to modulate the trapping and imaging light intensities. We further demonstrate that the mean loading efficiency remains as high as 80.0(6)% for a single trap and 74.2(7)% for a one-dimensional array of eight atoms. The methods reported here are applicable to all the alkalis, including those that are attractive candidates for dipolar molecule assembly, Rydberg dressing, or are fermionic in nature.
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.