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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Optical tweezers for manipulating single atoms

Lukas Brandt, Cecilia Muldoon, Edouard Brainis, Axel Kuhn

Published Jun 1, 2009• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Our goal is to realize a scalable cluster of entangled atoms trapped in fully controllable arrays of optical tweezers. The optical-tweezers array we are currently implementing consists of a freely configurable two-dimensional array of dipole-force traps, which we obtain by imaging the intensity pattern from a spatial-light modulator (SLM) into our apparatus. In every dipole trap, the intensity gradient gives rise to a force that confines the atom to an effective potential well.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-eqec.2009.5192906

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Our goal is to realize a scalable cluster of entangled atoms trapped in fully controllable arrays of optical tweezers. The optical-tweezers array we are currently implementing consists of a freely configurable two-dimensional array of dipole-force traps, which we obtain by imaging the intensity pattern from a spatial-light modulator (SLM) into our apparatus. In every dipole trap, the intensity gradient gives rise to a force that confines the atom to an effective potential well.
Neutral atoms trapped by laser light are among the most promising candidates for storing and processing information in a quantum computer or simulator. The application certainly calls for a scalable and flexible scheme for addressing and manipulating the atoms. We have now made this a reality by implementing a fast and versatile method to dynamically control the position of neutral atoms trapped in optical tweezers. The tweezers result from a spatial light modulator (SLM) controlling and shaping a large number of optical dipole-force traps. Trapped atoms adapt to any change in the potential landscape, such that one can rearrange and randomly access individual sites within atom-trap arrays.
Single atoms are promising candidates for physically implementing quantum bits, the fundamental unit of quantum information. We have built an apparatus for cooling, trapping and imaging single rubidium atoms in microscopic optical tweezers. The traps are formed from a tightly focused off-resonant laser beam, which traps atoms using the optical dipole force. The traps have a diameter of ~1 μm and a depth of ~1 mK. The novelty of our approach is the use a digital mirror device (DMD) to generate multiple independently movable tweezers from a single laser beam. The DMD consists of an array of micro-mirrors that can be switched on and off, thus acting as a binary amplitude modulator. We use the DMD to imprint a computer-generated hologram on the laser beam, which is converted in to the desired arrangement of traps in the focal plane of a lens. We have developed fast algorithms for calculating binary holograms suitable for the DMD. In addition, we use this method to measure and correct for errors in the phase of the wavefront caused by optical aberrations, which is necessary for producing diffraction-limited focal spots. Using this apparatus, we have trapped arrays of up to 20 atoms with arbitrary geometrical arrangements. We exploit light-assisted collisions between atoms to ensure there is at most one atom per trapping site. We measure the temperature of the atoms in the traps to be 12 μK, and their lifetime to be 1.4 s. Finally, we demonstrate the ability to select individual atoms from an array and transport them over a distance of 14μm with laser cooling, and 5 μm without.
Trapped neutral atoms are one of the leading platforms for quantum information technologies, in particular for quantum computing, but scaling them to array sizes needed for utility-scale quantum computing is a major engineering challenge. Here we review optical metasurfaces as an enabling technology that provides fine control over the phase, amplitude, and polarization of light, with pixel counts far exceeding what is available with spatial light modulators (SLMs) and other active devices. The large pixel counts have recently led to demonstrations of arrays of optical tweezers with hundreds of thousands of sites and arrays of optical bottle-beams with complex three-dimensional trapping profiles. The flexibility and scalability of optical metasurfaces provides a route towards miniaturized, integrated, and highly scalable atomic experiments and instruments.
Microscopically controlled neutral atoms in optical tweezers and lattices have led to exciting advances in the study of quantum information and quantum many-body systems. The light shifts of atomic levels from the trapping potential in these systems can result in detrimental effects such as fluctuating dipole force heating, inhomogeneous detunings, and inhibition of laser cooling, which limits the atomic species that can be manipulated. In particular, these light shifts can be large enough to prevent loading into optical tweezers directly from a magneto-optical trap. We implement a general solution to these limitations by loading, as well as cooling and imaging the atoms with temporally alternating beams, and present an analysis of the role of heating and required cooling for single atom tweezer loading. Because this technique does not depend on any specific spectral properties, it should enable the optical tweezer platform to be extended to nearly any atomic or molecular species that can be laser cooled and optically trapped.
Efficient trapping and detection of single atoms in optical tweezers are important for realizing atom arrays, a promising platform for quantum simulation and quantum information processing. However, the scaling up of atom arrays can be impeded by detrimental light shifts induced by the tweezer trap, making it challenging to cool and image single atoms. Here, we report an order-of-magnitude increase in the scalability of 23Na^{23}\mathrm{Na}23Na atom arrays by using D1{D}_{1}D1​ magic wavelength tweezers to reduce the required tweezer power per trap. D1{D}_{1}D1​ magic wavelengths have been previously predicted to exist for all the alkali atoms but are not yet observed to date. We first experimentally confirm a D1{D}_{1}D1​ magic wavelength that is predicted to lie at 615.87 nm, which we then use to trap and image single atoms without having to modulate the trapping and imaging light intensities. We further demonstrate that the mean loading efficiency remains as high as 80.0(6)% for a single trap and 74.2(7)% for a one-dimensional array of eight atoms. The methods reported here are applicable to all the alkalis, including those that are attractive candidates for dipolar molecule assembly, Rydberg dressing, or are fermionic in nature.