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Optics Communications

Dark-ground imaging of high optical thickness atom clouds

Aaron Reinhard, Jean-Félix Riou, Laura A. Zundel, David S. Weiss

Published Mar 18, 2014• 5 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1016/j.optcom.2014.02.070

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Characterizing the Potential Energy of an Atom Trap Through Tomographic Fluorescence Imaging

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We have developed a technique to fully characterize an arbitrary potential energy of an atom trap.The characterization allows one to measure the symmetry of the trap, a determining factor in many trapped atom applications.Created through a magneto-optical trap and evaporative cooling, a cold atom cloud is first loaded into our weakly-confined time-orbiting potential (TOP) trap.The whole atom cloud is then optically pumped into a dark state, an energy level that does not interact with the probe laser light.A selected part of the atom cloud is reactivated by a repump light which optically pump the atoms back into a state that can be probed.The repump light is shaped into a light sheet 168 µm thick.The reactivated region interacts with the probe laser light to create a fluorescence image.Since the light sheet is much thinner than the atom cloud, which is roughly 2 mm wide, the fluorescence image obtained is a cross-section of the atom cloud.A movable light sheet allows us to generate crosssection images of the cloud at different positions.A composite image of all the crosssection images shows the complete potential profile of our atom trap.This is similar to tomographic imaging used in medical imaging.We have verified the technique with two other methods: direct oscillation measurement at varying amplitude and numerical simulation of the atom trap.The technique is able to measure the potential up to the fourth-order terms in spatial coordinates.A complete characterization of the atom trap's symmetry will allow us to develop an atomic Foucault pendulum, a novel application for trapped atoms.5.3 Acceptable level of anharmonicity . . . . . . .

•Nov 23, 2016•0 citations
Abstract Cold atom experiments often use images of the atom clouds as their exclusive source of experimental information. The most commonly used technique is absorption imaging, which provides accurate information about the shapes of the atom clouds, but requires care when seeking the absolute atom number for small atom samples. In this paper, we present an independent, absolute calibration of the atom numbers. We directly compare the atom number detected using dark-ground imaging to the one observed by fluorescence imaging of the same atoms in a magneto-optical trap. We normalise the signal using single-atom resolved fluorescence imaging. In order to be able to image the absorption of the very low atom numbers involved, we use diffractive dark-ground imaging as a novel, ultra-sensitive method of in situ imaging for untrapped atom clouds down to only 100 atoms. We demonstrate that the Doppler shift due to the acceleration of the atoms by the probe beam has to be taken into account when measuring the atom-number.
We have developed a technique to fully characterize an arbitrary potential energy of an atom trap.The characterization allows one to measure the symmetry of the trap, a determining factor in many trapped atom applications.Created through a magneto-optical trap and evaporative cooling, a cold atom cloud is first loaded into our weakly-confined time-orbiting potential (TOP) trap.The whole atom cloud is then optically pumped into a dark state, an energy level that does not interact with the probe laser light.A selected part of the atom cloud is reactivated by a repump light which optically pump the atoms back into a state that can be probed.The repump light is shaped into a light sheet 168 µm thick.The reactivated region interacts with the probe laser light to create a fluorescence image.Since the light sheet is much thinner than the atom cloud, which is roughly 2 mm wide, the fluorescence image obtained is a cross-section of the atom cloud.A movable light sheet allows us to generate crosssection images of the cloud at different positions.A composite image of all the crosssection images shows the complete potential profile of our atom trap.This is similar to tomographic imaging used in medical imaging.We have verified the technique with two other methods: direct oscillation measurement at varying amplitude and numerical simulation of the atom trap.The technique is able to measure the potential up to the fourth-order terms in spatial coordinates.A complete characterization of the atom trap's symmetry will allow us to develop an atomic Foucault pendulum, a novel application for trapped atoms.5.3 Acceptable level of anharmonicity . . . . . . .