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Physical Review Letters

Precision position measurement of moving atoms using optical fields

K. D. Stokes, C. Schnurr, J. R. Gardner, M. Marable, George R. Welch, John E. Thomas

Published Oct 7, 1991• 86 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate optical techniques for precisely measuring the position of moving atoms. Micron spatial resolution is attained by the methods which ultimately will scale to yield nanometer resolution limited by the uncertainty principle.
DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.67.1997

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Recently, we have begun to develop optical techniques for ultra‐high resolution position measurement and localization of moving atoms. The methods employ Raman‐induced resonance imaging in which a spatially varying potential correlates an atomic resonance frequency with the atomic position. Optical methods are ideally suited for high resolution resonance imaging because they permit the study of very small volumes, which facilitates the use of spatially varying potentials with very large gradients and eliminates the need to place mechanical surfaces in the region to be studied. Hence, the methods have many applications to atom optics experiments in both beams and traps, where they can be used to create and measure small scale atomic spatial distributions and to perform spatial correlation experiments. The current experiments demonstrate a new method of imaging employing a spatially varying light‐shift to achieve spatial resolution of 200 nanometers, with a few percent linearity over several microns. Centroids of localized atomic distributions are determined from the χ2 fits with an accuracy of ±20 nanometers. New experiments employing still larger gradients and single atom detection are expected to achieve nanometer spatial resolution, limited by the uncertainty principle.