Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Physical Review A

Optical spectral imaging of a single layer of a quantum gas with an ultranarrow optical transition

Kosuke Shibata, Ryuta Yamamoto, Yu Seki, Yoshiro Takahashi

Published Mar 25, 2014• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrated high-sensitivity optical spectral imaging of a single layer of a quantum gas of ytterbium atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice using the ultranarrow ${}^{1}{S}_{0}$-${}^{3}{P}_{2}$ transition. We successfully obtained a set of excitation-frequency-dependent fluorescence images with an excitation laser of the linewidth of 1 kHz (FWHM), and the overall features were well explained by considering the inhomogeneous light shift originating from the Gaussian beam shape of the optical lattice potential which provided the steepest potential gradient of 3.6 kHz/$\ensuremath{\mu}$m. This result is also the successful demonstration of the tunable local atom addressing along the equipotential contour depending on the excitation laser frequency with the frequency resolution of 8 kHz and the spatial resolution of approximately 2 $\ensuremath{\mu}$m. The demonstrated technique will be useful for many purposes including the measurement of interaction shift in the study of a quantum gas and quantum information processing.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.89.031601

Related papers

High-Sensitivity In situ Fluorescence Imaging of Ytterbium Atoms in a Two-Dimensional Optical Lattice with Dual Optical Molasses

Kosuke Shibata, Ryuta Yamamoto, Yoshiro Takahashi

We developed a dual molasses technique which enabled us to perform high-sensitivity in situ fluorescence imaging of ytterbium (Yb) atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice prepared in a thin glass cell. This technique successfully combines two different kinds of optical molasses for Yb atoms, that is, the one using the 1S0–1P1 transition which provides high-resolution in the in situ fluorescence imaging and the other using the 1S0–3P1 transition for cooling the atoms in the optical lattice. We performed in situ imaging of 174Yb atoms and could observe a Moiré pattern with a period of about 6 µm produced by the molasses beam with 556 nm and the optical lattice with 532 nm, which implies that the temperature was kept below the lattice depth during the fluorescence imaging. The number of photons per atom is estimated to be enough for single atom detection with our imaging system. This result is quite promising for the realization of an Yb quantum gas microscope.

Journal of the Physical Society of Japan•Dec 10, 2013•6 citations

An ytterbium quantum gas microscope with narrow-line laser cooling

Ryuta Yamamoto, Jun Kobayashi, Takuma Kuno +2 more

We demonstrate site-resolved imaging of individual bosonic atoms in a Hubbard-regime two-dimensional optical lattice with a short lattice constant of 266 nm. To suppress the heating by probe light with the 1 S 0 – 1 P 1 transition of the wavelength λ = 399 nm for high-resolution imaging and preserve atoms at the same lattice sites during the fluorescence imaging, we simultaneously cool atoms by additionally applying narrow-line optical molasses with the 1 S 0 – 3 P 1 transition of the wavelength λ = 556 nm. We achieve a low temperature of , corresponding to a mean oscillation quantum number along the horizontal axes of 0.22(4) during the imaging process. We detect, on average, 200 fluorescence photons from a single atom within a 400 ms exposure time, and estimate a detection fidelity of 87(2)%. The realization of a quantum gas microscope with enough fidelity for Yb atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice opens up the possibilities for studying various kinds of quantum many-body systems such as Bose and Fermi gases, and their mixtures, and also long-range-interacting systems such as Rydberg states.

arXiv:1509.03233•New Journal of Physics•Feb 1, 2016•138 citations

High-sensitivity in situ imaging of atoms in an optical lattice with narrow optical transitions

Kosuke Shibata

続紙 １ ) 京都大学 博 士(理 学) 氏名 柴田 康介 論文題目 High-sensitivity in situ imaging of atoms in an optical lattice with narrow optical transitions (狭線幅光学遷移を用いた光格子中の原子の高感度その場イメージング) (論文内容の要旨)Development of laser cooling techniques in recent decades has enabled us to study neutral atoms in a quite controlled way.Cold neutral atoms have been used as a platform to study intriguing quantum many-body phenomena such as Bose-Einstein condensation and Bardeen-Cooper-Schriefer-Bose-Einstein condensation crossover.The excellent controllability of a cold atom system allows us precise measurements with unprecedented accuracy, which provides wide applications, such as an atomic clock.Another important application of cold atoms is quantum information processing.Internal degrees of freedom of a trapped cold atom can be regarded as a well-defined quantum bit (qubit) and quantum gate operations are realized by moderate internal or external interaction.In such cold atom research, a probing method plays an important role.In fact, one of the advantages of cold atom research is the ability to "see" atoms directly by taking images of the atoms via resonant or near-resonant light to the atoms.Among various developments in probing techniques, high-sensitivity detection is of particular importance, especially in the study of a simple system of a few atoms.While high-sensitivity detection and imaging were demonstrated with alkaline metals, there has been increasing interest on a different kind of atomic species.One attractive atomic species is ytterbium.Ytterbium is an alkaline-earth-like-metal atom and has several unique features, such as the rich variety of isotopes of two fermions and five bosons, and the existence of long-lived metastable electronic states.These features offer various possibilities in quantum many-body physics research and are also advantageous to quantum information processing as well as precision measurement.Therefore, a high-sensitivity imaging of ytterbium atoms will bring about a significant development in cold atom research.Under these backgrounds, this thesis reports on the successful demonstration of highsensitivity in situ imaging of ytterbium atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice.The applicant demonstrated fluorescence imaging of ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice using optical molasses with a narrow optical transition of the wavelength 556 nm ("green molasses"), providing the Doppler cooling limit temperature low enough compared to the typical optical lattice depths.The applicant successfully observed a spatial modulation of fluorescence intensity with a period of approximately 6 μm as a result of the interference between the lattice period of 266 nm and the period of the standing-wave optical molasses of 278 nm.This pattern indicates that the temperature was sufficiently lower than the lattice potential so that the atoms emitted fluorescent photons around the bottom of the lattice sites

•Jan 23, 2014•0 citations

High Resolution Imaging of Single Atoms in a Quantum Gas

Tatjana Gericke, Würtz, Peter, Reitz, Daniel +2 more

Our knowledge on ultracold quantum gases is strongly influenced by our ability to probe these objects. In situ imaging combined with single atom sensitivity is an especially appealing scenario as it can provide direct information on the structure and the correlations of such systems. For a precise characterization a high spatial resolution is mandatory. In particular, the perspective to study quantum gases in optical lattices makes a resolution well below one micrometer highly desirable. Here, we report on a novel microscopy technique which is based on scanning electron microscopy and allows for the detection of single atoms inside a quantum gas with a spatial resolution of better than 150 nm. Imaging a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional optical lattice with 600 nm period we demonstrate single site addressability in a sub-um optical lattice. The technique offers exciting possibilities for the preparation, manipulation and analysis of quantum gases.

arXiv:0804.4788•Apr 30, 2008•1 citation

A Strontium Quantum-Gas Microscope

Sandra Buob, Jonatan Höschele, Vasiliy Makhalov +2 more

The development of quantum-gas microscopes has brought novel ways of probing quantum degenerate many-body systems at the single-atom level. Until now, most of these setups have focused on alkali atoms. Expanding quantum-gas microscopy to alkaline-earth elements will provide new tools, such as SU( N )-symmetric fermionic isotopes or ultranarrow optical transitions, to the field of quantum simulation. Here we demonstrate the site-resolved imaging of a 84 Sr bosonic quantum gas in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice. The quantum gas is confined by a two-dimensional in-plane lattice and a light-sheet potential, which operate at the strontium clock-magic wavelength of 813.4 nm. We realize fluorescence imaging using the broad 461-nm transition, which provides high spatial resolution. Simultaneously, we perform attractive Sisyphus cooling with the narrow 689-nm intercombination line. We reconstruct the atomic occupation from the fluorescence images, obtaining imaging fidelities above 94 % . Finally, we realize a 84 Sr superfluid in the Bose-Hubbard regime. We observe its interference pattern upon expansion, a probe of phase coherence, with single-atom resolution. Our strontium quantum-gas microscope provides a new platform to study dissipative Hubbard models, quantum optics in atomic arrays, and SU( N ) fermions at the microscopic level. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

arXiv:2312.14818•PRX Quantum•Apr 18, 2024•21 citations

An ytterbium quantum gas microscope with narrow-line laser cooling

Ryuta Yamamoto, Jun Kobayashi, Takuma Kuno +2 more

We demonstrate site-resolved imaging of individual bosonic 174Yb atoms in aHubbard-regime twodimensional optical lattice with a short lattice constant of 266 nm. To suppress the heating by probe light with the 1S0- 1P1 transition of the wavelength λ = 399 nmfor high-resolution imaging and preserve atoms at the same lattice sites during the fluorescence imaging, we simultaneously cool atoms by additionally applying narrow-line optical molasses with the 1S0 3P1 transition of the wavelength λ = 556 nm.We achieve a lowtemperature of T = 7.4(13) μK, corresponding to amean oscillationquantum number along the horizontal axes of 0.22(4) during the imaging process.Wedetect, on average, 200 fluorescence photons from a single atom within a 400 ms exposure time, and estimate a detection fidelity of 87(2)%. The realization of a quantum gas microscope with enough fidelity for Yb atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice opens up the possibilities for studying various kinds of quantum many-body systems such as Bose and Fermi gases, and their mixtures, and also long-rangeinteracting systems such as Rydberg states.

•Feb 1, 2016•120 citations
We demonstrated high-sensitivity optical spectral imaging of a single layer of a quantum gas of ytterbium atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice using the ultranarrow 1S0{}^{1}{S}_{0}1S0​-3P2{}^{3}{P}_{2}3P2​ transition. We successfully obtained a set of excitation-frequency-dependent fluorescence images with an excitation laser of the linewidth of 1 kHz (FWHM), and the overall features were well explained by considering the inhomogeneous light shift originating from the Gaussian beam shape of the optical lattice potential which provided the steepest potential gradient of 3.6 kHz/\ensuremathμ\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremathμm. This result is also the successful demonstration of the tunable local atom addressing along the equipotential contour depending on the excitation laser frequency with the frequency resolution of 8 kHz and the spatial resolution of approximately 2 \ensuremathμ\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremathμm. The demonstrated technique will be useful for many purposes including the measurement of interaction shift in the study of a quantum gas and quantum information processing.
We developed a dual molasses technique which enabled us to perform high-sensitivity in situ fluorescence imaging of ytterbium (Yb) atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice prepared in a thin glass cell. This technique successfully combines two different kinds of optical molasses for Yb atoms, that is, the one using the 1S0–1P1 transition which provides high-resolution in the in situ fluorescence imaging and the other using the 1S0–3P1 transition for cooling the atoms in the optical lattice. We performed in situ imaging of 174Yb atoms and could observe a Moiré pattern with a period of about 6 µm produced by the molasses beam with 556 nm and the optical lattice with 532 nm, which implies that the temperature was kept below the lattice depth during the fluorescence imaging. The number of photons per atom is estimated to be enough for single atom detection with our imaging system. This result is quite promising for the realization of an Yb quantum gas microscope.
We demonstrate site-resolved imaging of individual bosonic atoms in a Hubbard-regime two-dimensional optical lattice with a short lattice constant of 266 nm. To suppress the heating by probe light with the 1 S 0 – 1 P 1 transition of the wavelength λ = 399 nm for high-resolution imaging and preserve atoms at the same lattice sites during the fluorescence imaging, we simultaneously cool atoms by additionally applying narrow-line optical molasses with the 1 S 0 – 3 P 1 transition of the wavelength λ = 556 nm. We achieve a low temperature of , corresponding to a mean oscillation quantum number along the horizontal axes of 0.22(4) during the imaging process. We detect, on average, 200 fluorescence photons from a single atom within a 400 ms exposure time, and estimate a detection fidelity of 87(2)%. The realization of a quantum gas microscope with enough fidelity for Yb atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice opens up the possibilities for studying various kinds of quantum many-body systems such as Bose and Fermi gases, and their mixtures, and also long-range-interacting systems such as Rydberg states.
続紙 １ ) 京都大学 博 士(理 学) 氏名 柴田 康介 論文題目 High-sensitivity in situ imaging of atoms in an optical lattice with narrow optical transitions (狭線幅光学遷移を用いた光格子中の原子の高感度その場イメージング) (論文内容の要旨)Development of laser cooling techniques in recent decades has enabled us to study neutral atoms in a quite controlled way.Cold neutral atoms have been used as a platform to study intriguing quantum many-body phenomena such as Bose-Einstein condensation and Bardeen-Cooper-Schriefer-Bose-Einstein condensation crossover.The excellent controllability of a cold atom system allows us precise measurements with unprecedented accuracy, which provides wide applications, such as an atomic clock.Another important application of cold atoms is quantum information processing.Internal degrees of freedom of a trapped cold atom can be regarded as a well-defined quantum bit (qubit) and quantum gate operations are realized by moderate internal or external interaction.In such cold atom research, a probing method plays an important role.In fact, one of the advantages of cold atom research is the ability to "see" atoms directly by taking images of the atoms via resonant or near-resonant light to the atoms.Among various developments in probing techniques, high-sensitivity detection is of particular importance, especially in the study of a simple system of a few atoms.While high-sensitivity detection and imaging were demonstrated with alkaline metals, there has been increasing interest on a different kind of atomic species.One attractive atomic species is ytterbium.Ytterbium is an alkaline-earth-like-metal atom and has several unique features, such as the rich variety of isotopes of two fermions and five bosons, and the existence of long-lived metastable electronic states.These features offer various possibilities in quantum many-body physics research and are also advantageous to quantum information processing as well as precision measurement.Therefore, a high-sensitivity imaging of ytterbium atoms will bring about a significant development in cold atom research.Under these backgrounds, this thesis reports on the successful demonstration of highsensitivity in situ imaging of ytterbium atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice.The applicant demonstrated fluorescence imaging of ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice using optical molasses with a narrow optical transition of the wavelength 556 nm ("green molasses"), providing the Doppler cooling limit temperature low enough compared to the typical optical lattice depths.The applicant successfully observed a spatial modulation of fluorescence intensity with a period of approximately 6 μm as a result of the interference between the lattice period of 266 nm and the period of the standing-wave optical molasses of 278 nm.This pattern indicates that the temperature was sufficiently lower than the lattice potential so that the atoms emitted fluorescent photons around the bottom of the lattice sites
Our knowledge on ultracold quantum gases is strongly influenced by our ability to probe these objects. In situ imaging combined with single atom sensitivity is an especially appealing scenario as it can provide direct information on the structure and the correlations of such systems. For a precise characterization a high spatial resolution is mandatory. In particular, the perspective to study quantum gases in optical lattices makes a resolution well below one micrometer highly desirable. Here, we report on a novel microscopy technique which is based on scanning electron microscopy and allows for the detection of single atoms inside a quantum gas with a spatial resolution of better than 150 nm. Imaging a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional optical lattice with 600 nm period we demonstrate single site addressability in a sub-um optical lattice. The technique offers exciting possibilities for the preparation, manipulation and analysis of quantum gases.
The development of quantum-gas microscopes has brought novel ways of probing quantum degenerate many-body systems at the single-atom level. Until now, most of these setups have focused on alkali atoms. Expanding quantum-gas microscopy to alkaline-earth elements will provide new tools, such as SU( N )-symmetric fermionic isotopes or ultranarrow optical transitions, to the field of quantum simulation. Here we demonstrate the site-resolved imaging of a 84 Sr bosonic quantum gas in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice. The quantum gas is confined by a two-dimensional in-plane lattice and a light-sheet potential, which operate at the strontium clock-magic wavelength of 813.4 nm. We realize fluorescence imaging using the broad 461-nm transition, which provides high spatial resolution. Simultaneously, we perform attractive Sisyphus cooling with the narrow 689-nm intercombination line. We reconstruct the atomic occupation from the fluorescence images, obtaining imaging fidelities above 94 % . Finally, we realize a 84 Sr superfluid in the Bose-Hubbard regime. We observe its interference pattern upon expansion, a probe of phase coherence, with single-atom resolution. Our strontium quantum-gas microscope provides a new platform to study dissipative Hubbard models, quantum optics in atomic arrays, and SU( N ) fermions at the microscopic level. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We demonstrate site-resolved imaging of individual bosonic 174Yb atoms in aHubbard-regime twodimensional optical lattice with a short lattice constant of 266 nm. To suppress the heating by probe light with the 1S0- 1P1 transition of the wavelength λ = 399 nmfor high-resolution imaging and preserve atoms at the same lattice sites during the fluorescence imaging, we simultaneously cool atoms by additionally applying narrow-line optical molasses with the 1S0 3P1 transition of the wavelength λ = 556 nm.We achieve a lowtemperature of T = 7.4(13) μK, corresponding to amean oscillationquantum number along the horizontal axes of 0.22(4) during the imaging process.Wedetect, on average, 200 fluorescence photons from a single atom within a 400 ms exposure time, and estimate a detection fidelity of 87(2)%. The realization of a quantum gas microscope with enough fidelity for Yb atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice opens up the possibilities for studying various kinds of quantum many-body systems such as Bose and Fermi gases, and their mixtures, and also long-rangeinteracting systems such as Rydberg states.