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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Long lifetime of single atom in optical tweezer with laser cooling

Junmin Wang, Jun He, Baodong Yang, Tiancai Zhang, Kunchi Peng

Published Apr 30, 2010• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Single cesium atom prepared in a large-magnetic-gradient magneto-optical trap (MOT) has been efficiently loaded into a microscopic far-off-resonance optical trap (FORT, or optical tweezer), and the atom can be transferred back and forth between two traps with high efficiency. The intensity noise spectra of tweezer laser are measured and the heating mechanisms in optical tweezer are analyzed. To prolong the lifetime of single atom trapped in optical tweezer, laser cooling technique is utilized to decrease atom's kinetic energy, and the effective temperature of single atom in tweezer is estimated by the release-and-recapture (R&R) method. Thanks to laser cooling, typical lifetime of ~ 130.6 ± 1.8 s for single atom in tweezer is obtained. These works provides a good starting point for coherent manipulation of single atom.

DOI
10.1117/12.856340

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Single cesium atom prepared in a large-magnetic-gradient magneto-optical trap (MOT) has been efficiently loaded into a microscopic far-off-resonance optical trap (FORT, or optical tweezer), and the atom can be transferred back and forth between two traps with high efficiency. The intensity noise spectra of tweezer laser are measured and the heating mechanisms in optical tweezer are analyzed. To prolong the lifetime of single atom trapped in optical tweezer, laser cooling technique is utilized to decrease atom's kinetic energy, and the effective temperature of single atom in tweezer is estimated by the release-and-recapture (R&R) method. Thanks to laser cooling, typical lifetime of ~ 130.6 ± 1.8 s for single atom in tweezer is obtained. These works provides a good starting point for coherent manipulation of single atom.
Optical tweezers have become powerful tools for the confinement and manipulation of neutral atoms, molecules, mesoscopic biological molecules and living cells. In our experiment, a single caesium atom was prepared in a large-magnetic-gradient magneto-optical trap (MOT). It was then efficiently transferred back and forth between the MOT and a 1064 nm microscopic optical tweezer. The atomic transfer between the MOT and the tweezer can be employed to measure the trapping lifetime and the energy distribution of the single atom in the tweezer. In order to extend the trapping lifetime, laser cooling is used to decrease the atom's kinetic energy. The trapping lifetime was extended from ∼75 to ∼130 s by applying a 10 ms laser cooling phase just after the single atom is transferred into the tweezer.
In our experiment, a single cesium atom prepared in a large-magnetic-gradient magneto-optical trap (MOT) can be efficiently transferred into a 1064-nm far-off-resonance microscopic optical dipole trap (FORT). The efficient transfer of the single atom between the two traps is used to determine the trapping lifetime and the effective temperature of the single atom in FORT. The typical trapping lifetime has been improved from ∼ 6.9 s to ∼ 130 s by decreasing the background pressure from ∼ 1 × 10 −10 Torr to ∼ 2 × 10 −11 Torr and applying one-shot 10-ms laser cooling phase. We also theoretically investigate the dependence of trapping lifetimes of a single atom in a FORT on trap parameters based on the FORT beam’s intensity noise induced heating. Numerical simulations show that the heating depends on the FORT beam’s waist size and the trap depth. The trapping time can be predicted based on effective temperature measurement of a single atom in the FORT and the intensity noise spectra of the FORT beam. These experimental results are found to be in agreement with the predictions of the heating model.
By recording the fluorescence fraction of the cold atoms remaining in the magneto-optical trap (MOT) as a function of the release time, the release-and-recapture (R&R) method is utilized to evaluate the effective temperature of the cold atomic ensemble. We prepare a single atom in a large-magnetic-gradient MOT and then transfer the trapped single atom into a 1064-nm microscopic optical tweezer. The energy of the single atom trapped in the tweezer is further reduced by polarization gradient cooling (PGC) and the effective temperature is evaluated by extending the R&R technique to a single atom tweezer. The typical effective temperature of a single atom in the tweezer is improved from about 105 μK to about 17 μK by applying the optimum PGC phase.
This work deals with the cooling and trapping of single cesium (Cs) atoms in a large-magnetic-gradient magneto-optical trap (MOT) and the confinement of single Cs atoms in a far-off-resonance optical dipole trap (FORT). The experiment setup is based on two large-numerical-aperture lens assemblies which allow us to strongly focus a 1064-nm TEM00-mode Gaussian laser beam to a 1/e2 radius of ~ 2.3 μm to form a microscopic FORT for isolating single atom with environment and to efficiently collect the laser-induced-fluorescence photons emitted by single atoms for detecting and recognizing single atom’s internal state. We have tried both of “bottom-up” and “top-down” loading schemes to confine single atoms in the microscopic FORT. In the “bottom-up” scheme, we have successfully prepared single Cs atoms in the MOT and transferred it into FORT with a probability of almost 100%. In the “top-down” scheme, we have achieved ~ 74% of single atom loading probability in the FORT using light-assisted collisions induced by blue detuning laser and with prepared many Cs atoms in the MOT. The relaxation time in hyperfine level of ground state of trapped single Cs atom is measured to be ~5.4 s. To coherently manipulate atomic quantum bits (qubit) encoded in the clock states (mF = 0 states in Fg = 3 and 4 hyperfine levels) of single Cs atom via the two-photon simulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), we have prepared two phase-locked laser beams with a frequency difference of ~ 9.192 GHz by optically injecting an 852-nm master laser to lock the +1-order sideband of a 9-GHz current-modulated slave diode laser. The two phase-locked laser beams are used to drive STIRAP process in the Λ-type three-level system consists of Cs |6S1/2 Fg = 4, mF = 0> and |6S1/2 Fg = 3, mF = 0< long-lived clock states and Cs |6S1/2 Fe = 4, mF = +1 > excited state with the single-photon detuning of ~ -20 GHz. Rabi flopping experiments are in progress.
Based on our work on single cesium atoms trapped in a large-magnetic-gradient vapour-cell magneto-optical trap (MOT), the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is remarkably improved. Also a far-off-resonance optical dipole trap (FORT) formed by a strongly-focused 1064 nm single frequency Nd:YVO 4 laser beam is introduced. One cesium atom is prepared in the MOT, and then it can transfer successfully between the MOT and the FORT which is overlapped with the MOT. Utilizing the effective transfer, the lifetime of single atoms trapped in the FORT is measured to be 6.9 ± 0.3 s. Thus we provide a system where the atomic qubit can be coherently manipulated.
An optical tweezer composed of a strongly focused single-spatial-mode Gaussian beam of a red-detuned 1064-nm laser can confine a single-cesium (Cs) atom at the strongest point of the light intensity. We can use this for coherent manipulation of single-quantum bits and single-photon sources. The trapping lifetime of the atoms in the optical tweezers is very short due to the impact of the background atoms, the parametric heating of the optical tweezer and the residual thermal motion of the atoms. In this paper, we analyzed the influence of the background pressure, the trap frequency of optical tweezers and the laser intensity fluctuation of optical tweezers on the atomic trapping lifetime. Combined with the external feedback loop based on an acousto-optical modulator (AOM), the intensity fluctuation of the 1064-nm laser in the time domain was suppressed from ±3.360% to ±0.064%, and the suppression bandwidth in the frequency domain reached approximately 33 kHz. The trapping lifetime of a single-Cs atom in the microscopic optical tweezers was extended from 4.04 s to 6.34 s.