High-resolution fluorescence imaging of ultracold atoms and molecules is paramount to performing quantum simulation and computation in optical lattices and tweezers. Imaging durations in these experiments typically range from a millisecond to a second, significantly limiting the cycle time. In this work, we present fast, 2.4 μs single-atom imaging in lattices, with 99.4% fidelity - pushing the readout duration of neutral atom quantum platforms to be close to that of superconducting qubit platforms. Additionally, we thoroughly study the performance of accordion lattices. We also demonstrate number-resolved imaging without parity projection, which will facilitate experiments such as the exploration of high-filling phases in the extended Bose-Hubbard models, multi-band or SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard models, and quantum link models. High-resolution imaging is essential for quantum simulation and computation in optical lattices and tweezers. Here, authors achieve fast 2.4-microsecond single-atom imaging with 99.4% fidelity and demonstrate number-resolved imaging without parity projection, advancing quantum readout capabilities.
High-resolution fluorescence imaging of ultracold atoms and molecules is paramount to performing quantum simulation and computation in optical lattices and tweezers. Imaging durations in these experiments typically range from a millisecond to a second, significantly limiting the cycle time. In this work, we present fast, 2.4 μs single-atom imaging in lattices, with 99.4% fidelity - pushing the readout duration of neutral atom quantum platforms to be close to that of superconducting qubit platforms. Additionally, we thoroughly study the performance of accordion lattices. We also demonstrate number-resolved imaging without parity projection, which will facilitate experiments such as the exploration of high-filling phases in the extended Bose-Hubbard models, multi-band or SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard models, and quantum link models. High-resolution imaging is essential for quantum simulation and computation in optical lattices and tweezers. Here, authors achieve fast 2.4-microsecond single-atom imaging with 99.4% fidelity and demonstrate number-resolved imaging without parity projection, advancing quantum readout capabilities.
Scalable atom-based quantum platforms for simulation, computing, and metrology require fast high-fidelity, low-loss imaging of individual atoms. Standard fluorescence detection methods rely on continuous cooling, limiting the detection range to one atom and imposing long imaging times that constrain the experimental cycle and midcircuit conditional operations. Here, we demonstrate fast and low-loss single-atom imaging in optical tweezers without active cooling, enabled by the favorable properties of ytterbium. Collecting fluorescence over microsecond timescales, we reach single-atom discrimination fidelities above 99.9% and single-shot survival probabilities above 99.5%. Through interleaved recooling pulses, as short as a few hundred microseconds for atoms in magic traps, we perform tens of consecutive detections with constant atom-retention probability per image-an essential step toward fast atom reuse in tweezer-based processors and clocks. Our scheme does not induce parity projection in multiply occupied traps, enabling number-resolved single-shot detection of several atoms per site. This allows us to study the near-deterministic preparation of single atoms in tweezers driven by blue-detuned light-assisted collisions. Moreover, the near-diffraction-limited spatial resolution of our low-loss imaging enables number-resolved microscopy in dense arrays, opening the way to direct site-occupancy readout in optical lattices for density fluctuation and correlation measurements in quantum simulators.
Ultracold neutral atoms in an optical lattice and an optical tweezer array offer highly-controllable quantum many-body systems, utilized for various quantum science and technology such as quantum computing, quantum metrology, and quantum simulation. By combining high-fidelity imaging of individual atoms, one can further enhance the capability of such experimental platforms as quantum gas microscopes, tweezer clocks, and tweezer-array-based quantum computers. In this work, we propose a minimally destructive single-atom imaging by deterministic coherent excitation of atoms with alternately applied pi-pulses from counter-propagating directions, mitigating the fundamental heating effect associated with the stochastic absorption process. Using ytterbium-174 atoms trapped in an optical tweezer array, we experimentally demonstrate fast and low-loss single-atom imaging with a discrimination fidelity of 99.89(5) % and a survival probability of 98.80(44) % in 17.6 microseconds. Importantly, our scheme exhibits the lower heating rate, about half of that of the former scheme utilizing the incoherent excitation. This fast and minimally destructive imaging scheme is beneficial for relaxing the requirement on the trap depth, thereby enabling scalable atom imaging across a wide range of quantum science platforms.
Recent advances in quantum simulation based on neutral atoms have largely benefited from high-resolution, single-atom sensitive imaging techniques. A variety of approaches have been developed to achieve such local detection of atoms in optical lattices or optical tweezers. For alkaline-earth and alkaline-earth-like atoms, the presence of narrow optical transitions opens up the possibility of performing novel types of Sisyphus cooling, where the cooling mechanism originates from the capability to spatially resolve the differential optical level shifts in the trap potential. Up to now, it has been an open question whether high-fidelity imaging could be achieved in a "repulsive Sisyphus" configuration, where the trap depth of the ground state exceeds that of the excited state involved in cooling. Here, we demonstrate high-fidelity (99.971(1)%) and high-survival (99.80(5)%) imaging of strontium atoms using repulsive Sisyphus cooling. We use an optical lattice as a pinning potential for atoms in a large-scale tweezer array with up to 399 tweezers and show repeated, high-fidelity lattice-tweezer-lattice transfers. We furthermore demonstrate loading the lattice with approximately 10 000 atoms directly from the MOT and scalable imaging over >10 000 lattice sites with a combined survival probability and classification fidelity better than 99.2%. Our lattice thus serves as a locally addressable and sortable reservoir for continuous refilling of optical tweezer arrays in the future.
Optical tweezer arrays 1,2 have transformed atomic and molecular physics, now forming the backbone for a range of leading experiments in quantum computing 3–8 , simulation 1,9–12 , and metrology 13–15 . Typical experiments trap tens to hundreds of atomic qubits, and recently systems with around one thousand atoms were realized without defining qubits or demonstrating coherent control 16–18 . However, scaling to thousands of atomic qubits with long coherence times, low-loss, and high-fidelity imaging is an outstanding challenge and critical for progress in quantum science, particularly towards quantum error correction 19,20 . Here, we experimentally realize an array of optical tweezers trapping over 6,100 neutral atoms in around 12,000 sites, simultaneously surpassing state-of-the-art performance for several metrics that underpin the success of the platform. Specifically, while scaling to such a large number of atoms, we demonstrate a coherence time of 12.6(1) seconds, a record for hyperfine qubits in an optical tweezer array. We show room-temperature trapping lifetimes of ~ 23 minutes, enabling record-high imaging survival of 99.98952(1)% with an imaging fidelity of over 99.99%. We present a plan for zone-based quantum computing 5,21 and demonstrate necessary coherence-preserving qubit transport and pick-up/drop-off operations on large spatial scales, characterized through interleaved randomized benchmarking. Our results, along with recent developments 8,22–24 , indicate that universal quantum computing and quantum error correction with thousands to tens of thousands of physical qubits could be a near-term prospect.
Quantum gas microscopes have expanded the capabilities of quantum simulation of Hubbard models by enabling the study of spatial spin and density correlations in square lattices.However, quantum gas microscopes have not been realized for fermionic atoms in frustrated geometries.Here, we demonstrate the single-atom resolved imaging of ultracold fermionic 6 Li atoms in a triangular optical lattice with a lattice constant of 1003 nm.The optical lattice is formed by a recycled narrow-linewidth, high-power laser combined with a light sheet to allow for Raman sideband cooling on the D 1 line.We optically resolve single atoms on individual lattice sites using a high-resolution objective to collect scattered photons while cooling them close to the two-dimensional ground vibrational level in each lattice site.By reconstructing the lattice occupation, we measure an imaging fidelity of approximately 98%.Our triangular lattice microscope platform for fermions clears the path for studying spin-spin correlations, entanglement, and dynamics of geometrically frustrated Hubbard systems which are expected to exhibit exotic emergent phenomena including spin liquids and kinetic frustration.
Exercising microscopic control over quantum systems is a central theme in modern physics. Neutral-atom quantum simulators leverage this control to explore quantum many-body phenomena by realizing paradigmatic Hamiltonians, such as the Hubbard model, in isolated systems. Advances in single-atom-resolved manipulation and detection have allowed measurements of microscopic correlations in strongly interacting quantum systems. Quantum gas microscopes have successfully approached this from the top down, starting from bulk quantum gases, while optical tweezers offer a complementary bottom-up route based on controlled few-particle systems. Combining these approaches opens a pathway towards assembling many-body systems atom by atom, enabling deterministic control over the initial quantum state. This thesis presents the development of a compact quantum gas microscope for programmable ensembles of fermionic lithium-6. The apparatus integrates laser cooling, magnetic field control, quantum-gas preparation, optical tweezers, projected potentials, and high-resolution imaging around a high-numerical-aperture microscope objective. Evaporative cooling in a crossed optical dipole trap produces degenerate two-component Fermi gases and molecular Bose--Einstein condensates, providing the quantum-degenerate reservoir for subsequent experiments. We demonstrate uniform loading of degenerate fermionic ensembles into programmable two-dimensional tweezer arrays, overcoming reservoir-size limitations by translating the tweezer array across the reservoir. Leveraging fermionic statistics and the resolved motional spectrum, we prepare a singlet pair in the three-dimensional motional ground state of each tweezer trap. Across an 8x8 array, this yields an average single-particle preparation fidelity of 98.47%. We develop a novel approach combining the deterministic preparation with spin- and site-resolved control via global magnetic field gradients and locally projected repulsive potentials to produce arbitrary product state configurations in parallel across all sites. In this way, we achieve programmable assembly of spin--charge product states of up to 128 atoms, with fast experimental cycle times of 3 seconds. Furthermore, we realize a new scheme for simultaneous spin-, site-, and density-resolved imaging of individual lithium-6 atoms. Encoding the spin information in the fluorescence polarization, we resolve the two spin components within a single 20 microsecond exposure, achieving detection fidelities exceeding 98.5%. These capabilities establish a fast route to preparing low-entropy fermionic product states with microscopic control over their initial spin, charge, and motional configuration. Coupling such states through optical lattices or tunnel-coupled tweezers provides a route for initializing far-from-equilibrium many-body systems, with applications to strongly correlated physics, quantum transport and thermalization, and fermionic quantum information processing.