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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences

Single-atom manipulations in a microscopic dipole trap

G. Reymond, Nicolas Schlosser, Игорь Евгеньевич Проценко, Philippe Grangier

Published Jul 15, 2003• 25 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have realized a very small optical dipole trap that is designed to store and manipulate individual atoms. Due to the very small dipole-trap volume, a 'collisional blockade' mechanism locks the average number of trapped atoms at a value of 0.5 over a large range of loading rates. Here we describe methods to characterize the motion of a single trapped atom, and we also demonstrate the possibility of trapping two atoms individually at a short distance apart. Finally, we study theoretically the possibility to perform 'conditional quantum logic' by scattering photons from two such atoms.

DOI
10.1098/rsta.2003.1219

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We have realized a very small optical dipole trap that is designed to store and manipulate individual atoms. Due to the very small dipole-trap volume, a 'collisional blockade' mechanism locks the average number of trapped atoms at a value of 0.5 over a large range of loading rates. Here we describe methods to characterize the motion of a single trapped atom, and we also demonstrate the possibility of trapping two atoms individually at a short distance apart. Finally, we study theoretically the possibility to perform 'conditional quantum logic' by scattering photons from two such atoms.
We describe the operation of a very small optical dipole trap that is designed to store and manipulate individual atoms. Due to the very small dipole trap volume, a “collisional blockade ” mechanism locks the average number of trapped atoms on the value 0.5 over a large range of loading rates. We demonstrate experimentally the existence of this regime, and we describe also the “weakloading ” and “strong loading ” regimes outside the blockade range. In addition, we describe methods to measure the oscillation frequencies of a single atom in the trap with a high accuracy, and a “release and recapture ” method designed for temperature measurements at the single atom level. The measured “single atom temperature ” is 35 µK, that is in the sub-Doppler regime. Finally, by exploiting the extremely high density observed in the strong loading regime, we present preliminary results for evaporative cooling, where typically 30 atoms at 200 µK are forced to evaporate into about 10 atoms at 15 µK. 1
We present a brief overview of optical trapping experiments of individual neutral atoms. Then we describe in more details an experiment using a very small optical dipole trap, that is designed to store and manipulate individual atoms. Due to the very small dipole trap volume, a "collisional blockade" mechanism locks the average number of trapped atoms on the value 0.5 over a large range of loading rates. We study this regime experimentally, and we describe methods to measure the oscillation frequencies and the temperature of a single atom in the trap with a high accuracy.
We analyze the operating regimes of a very small optical dipole trap, loaded from a magneto-optical trap, as a function of the atom loading rate, i.e., the number of atoms per second entering the dipole trap. We show that, when the dipole trap volume is small enough, a "collisional blockade" mechanism locks the average number of trapped atoms on the value 0.5 over a large range of loading rates. We also discuss the "weak loading" and "strong loading" regimes outside the blockade range, and we demonstrate experimentally the existence of these three regimes.
We describe a simple experimental technique which allows us to store a single 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atom in an optical dipole trap. Due to light-induced two-body collisions during the loading stage of the trap the maximum number of captured atoms is locked to one. This collisional blockade effect is confirmed by the observation of photon antibunching in the detected fluorescence light. The spectral properties of single photons emitted by the atom were studied with a narrow-band scanning cavity. We find that the atomic fluorescence spectrum is dominated by the spectral width of the exciting laser light field. In addition we observe a spectral broadening of the atomic fluorescence light due to the Doppler effect. This allows us to determine the mean kinetic energy of the trapped atom corresponding to a temperature of $105\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$. This simple single-atom trap is the key element for the generation of atom-photon entanglement required for future applications in quantum communication and a first loophole-free test of Bell's inequality.
Single atoms are interesting candidates for studying quantum optics and quantum information processing. Recently, trapping and manipulation of single atoms using tight optical dipole traps has generated considerable interest. Here we report an experimental investigation of the dynamics of atoms in a modified optical dipole trap with a backward propagating dipole trap beam, where a change in the two-atom collision rate by six times has been achieved. The theoretical model presented gives a prediction of high probabilities of few-atom loading rates under proper experimental conditions. This work provides an alternative approach to the control of the few-atom dynamics in a dipole trap and the study of the collective quantum optical effects of a few atoms.