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Review of Scientific Instruments

Note: Design and implementation of a home-built imaging system with low jitter for cold atom experiments

Andrew J. Hachtel, Matthew Gillette, Ethan Clements, Shan Zhong, Michael Weeks, Samir Bali

Published May 1, 2016• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A novel home-built system for imaging cold atom samples is presented using a readily available astronomy camera which has the requisite sensitivity but no timing-control. We integrate the camera with LabVIEW achieving fast, low-jitter imaging with a convenient user-defined interface. We show that our system takes precisely timed millisecond exposures and offers significant improvements in terms of system jitter and readout time over previously reported home-built systems. Our system rivals current commercial "black box" systems in performance and user-friendliness.

DOI
10.1063/1.4950897

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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
A novel home-built system for imaging cold atom samples is presented using a readily available astronomy camera which has the requisite sensitivity but no timing-control. We integrate the camera with LabVIEW achieving fast, low-jitter imaging with a convenient user-defined interface. We show that our system takes precisely timed millisecond exposures and offers significant improvements in terms of system jitter and readout time over previously reported home-built systems. Our system rivals current commercial "black box" systems in performance and user-friendliness.
A charge-coupled device (CCD) camera capable of taking high-quality images of ultracold atomic samples can often represent a significant portion of the equipment costs in atom trapping experiment. We have modified the commercial control software of a CCD camera designed for astronomical imaging to take absorption images of ultracold rubidium clouds. This camera is sensitive at 780 nm and has been modified to take three successive 16-bit images at full resolution. The control software can be integrated into a Matlab graphical user interface with fitting routines written as Matlab functions. This camera is capable of recording high-quality images at a fraction of the cost of similar cameras typically used in atom trapping experiments.
In cold atom experiments, high resolution imaging systems have been used to extract in-situ density information when studying quantum gases, which is one of the hot topics in this field. Such a system is usually called “quantum-gas microscope”. In order to achieve a long working distance and large magnification, high resolution imaging of cold atoms through a vacuum window usually requires a long distance between the atoms and the camera. However, due to space limitation caused by a large number of nearby optical elements, it may be difficult to realize a long imaging system, which is a common case in cold atom experiments. Herein we present an imaging system that can achieve a short distance between the atoms and the image plane with diffraction-limited 1 μm resolution and 50 magnification. The telephoto lens design is adopted to reduce the back focal length and enhance the pointing stability of the imaging lens. The system is optimized at an operating wavelength of 767 nm and corrects aberrations induced by a 5-mm-thick silica vacuum window. At a working distance of 32 mm, a diffraction-limited field of view of 408 μm is obtained. The simulation result shows that by changing the air space between lenses, our design operates across a wide range of window thicknesses (0–15 mm), which makes it robust enough to be used in typical laboratories. This compact imaging system is made from commercial on-shelf Φ2 in (1 in = 2.54 cm) singlets and consists of two components: a microscope objective with a numerical aperture of 0.47 and a telephoto objective with a long effective focal length of 1826 mm. Both are infinitely corrected, allowing the distance between them to be adjusted to insert optical elements for irradiating atoms with laser beams of different wavelengths without affecting the imaging resolution. Taking the manufacturing and assembling tolerances into consideration, the Monte Carlo analyses show that more than 95% of the random samples are diffraction-limited within the field of view. This high success rate ensures that these two objectives can be achieved easily in the experiment. Combined with its performance with other wavelengths (470–1064 nm), this imaging system can be used for imaging different atom species, such as sodium, lithium, and cesium.
This thesis presents work toward a quantum simulator with cold atoms. Characteristic and defining subsystems of the experimental setup are presented. Among them there are: the self-made viewports for ultra-high vacuum using indium seals, work on a modular laser system, for laser cooling, with miniaturised optics for the optimization of double path acusto-optic modulator. Work on a computer control to implement past slot is also presented. \nA versatile detection system for absorption imaging was designed and built. This detection system is stable, easy to align and exchange of magnification is simple. As well, a high resolution imaging system was designed, built and tested. This imaging system uses commercial microscope objectives and has been designed to work with four different microscope objective. Magnification of 5x, 10x 20x and 50x are possible. With the maximum magnification of 50x a resolution of 1.74μm for 780nm was achieved. Also a camera control for in-situ absorption imaging was programmed. Calculation of number of atoms and temperature were implemented in the program, as well as a defringing algorithm. \nA new method for temperature calculation for atoms held in a magnetic quadrupole trap was developed and tested, giving similar calculation of temperature as the commonly known time of flight (TOF) method. It is shown that this new method gives better results than the common TOF method for short time of flight. \nCharacterization of atom losses and heating in the production of a Bose-Einstein condensate were performed.
Cold atom experiments usually need a controllable and low-noise bias magnetic field to provide a quantization axis. Most labs need home-made stabilization of the field according to the actual setup, as commercially available power supply cannot directly satisfy their requirements. Here, by measuring the field fluctuations and active feedback modulating current supply of the applied magnetic field, we successfully demonstrate a field of 10.58 G with a stability to the level of 2.8 × 10−7 in a duration of 5 min. The root mean square noise is reduced to 0.05 mG, compared to the noise of 1.3 mG without stabilization. The coherence time of the magnetic-field sensitive transition between the rubidium ground states F=1,mF=−1 and 1,0, as measured by Rabi oscillation, is extended to 19.2 ms from the unstabilized value of 1.3 ms. This result is long enough for most experiments on quantum simulation and precision measurement. As our system has no passive magnetic shielding and additional compensation coils, it is highly simple and compact to provide the stable magnetic field and would be adapted to various applications with cold atoms.
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