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Optics Letters

Robust site-resolved addressing via dynamically tracking the phase of optical lattices

Yong-Guang Zheng, Zi-Hang Zhu, Ying Liu, Wei-Yong Zhang, Han-Yi Wang, Song-Tao Yu, An Luo, Hui Kai Sun, Zhen-Sheng Yuan, Jian-Wei Pan

Published Jul 19, 2022• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Single-site-resolved addressing offers an unprecedented capability of manipulating atoms in optical lattices. We demonstrate a robust site-resolved addressing by locking the position of the addressing beam to the optical lattice phase. The addressing beam is modulated by a digital micromirror device (DMD) integrated into a quantum gas microscope (QGM). A typical experiment with ultracold atoms takes several hours to collect hundreds of samples by repeating the sequence of programmed operations, whose duration is 40 seconds. During the collection, the phase of optical lattices can drift over a few lattice sites. According to the phases of the lattice obtained from the current experimental realizations, we correct the addressing beam position for the subsequent realization by shifting the pattern of the activated micromirrors on the DMD. This feedback loop is compiled to an application with a graphical user interface (GUI) for relevant devices, which is synchronized to the experimental sequence. The long-term (5 hours) position deviation between the pointing of the addressing beam and the lattice phase is suppressed to a 0.02(2)/0.02(2) lattice spacing in the X/Y direction, verifying a 10-fold reduction in comparison to that without feedback. With the help of phase-locking, the success rate of site-resolved addressing is improved substantially from 60(7)% to 95(2)%.

DOI
10.1364/ol.463514

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Single-site-resolved addressing offers an unprecedented capability of manipulating atoms in optical lattices. We demonstrate a robust site-resolved addressing by locking the position of the addressing beam to the optical lattice phase. The addressing beam is modulated by a digital micromirror device (DMD) integrated into a quantum gas microscope (QGM). A typical experiment with ultracold atoms takes several hours to collect hundreds of samples by repeating the sequence of programmed operations, whose duration is 40 seconds. During the collection, the phase of optical lattices can drift over a few lattice sites. According to the phases of the lattice obtained from the current experimental realizations, we correct the addressing beam position for the subsequent realization by shifting the pattern of the activated micromirrors on the DMD. This feedback loop is compiled to an application with a graphical user interface (GUI) for relevant devices, which is synchronized to the experimental sequence. The long-term (5 hours) position deviation between the pointing of the addressing beam and the lattice phase is suppressed to a 0.02(2)/0.02(2) lattice spacing in the X/Y direction, verifying a 10-fold reduction in comparison to that without feedback. With the help of phase-locking, the success rate of site-resolved addressing is improved substantially from 60(7)% to 95(2)%.
The implementation of spatial light modulators (SLMs) in quantum gas experiments has allowed the realization of ever more complex trapping geometries. As ultracold atoms may be sensitive to perturbations of the trapping potential at the 1% level, the high contrast ratios of digital micromirror devices are proving advantageous for use in optical trapping. Our laboratory pursues configurable traps based on the direct (nearly diffraction limited) imaging of a digital micromirror device (DMD). We achieve highly flexible potentials using commercially available microscope objectives external to our vacuum chamber that directly project the DMD to the atom plane, producing optical traps over an area of 130 μm × 200 μm, with a resolution of 630(10) nm full width at half maximum (FWHM) at 532 nm illumination. We combine these potentials with a horizontally propagating TEM00 or TEM01 Hermite-Gaussian optical sheet that provides vertical confinement. With the dynamic control enabled by the maximum full-frame rate of 20 KHz and on-board storage of <13,000 frames of the DMD, we study the transport of atoms and superfluid dynamics in configurable trapping geometries. Using the fast frame rate of the DMD we also produce intermediate grey levels that complement half-toning techniques for producing optimized grayscale patterns.
The quantum matter synthesizer (QMS) is a new quantum simulation platform in which individual particles in a lattice can be resolved and re-arranged into arbitrary patterns. The ability to spatially manipulate ultracold atoms and control their tunneling and interactions at the single-particle level allows full control of a many-body quantum system. We present the design and characterization of the QMS, which integrates into a single ultra-stable apparatus a two-dimensional optical lattice, a moving optical tweezer array formed by a digital micromirror device, and site-resolved atomic imaging. We demonstrate excellent mechanical stability between the lattice and tweezer array with relative fluctuations below 10 nm, diffraction-limited imaging at a resolution of 655 nm, and high-speed real-time control of the tweezer array at a 2.52 kHz refresh rate, which will be adopted to realize fast rearrangement of atoms. The QMS also features new technologies and schemes, such as nanotextured anti-reflective windows and all-optical long-distance transport of atoms.
We demonstrate single-site addressability in a two-dimensional optical lattice with 600 nm lattice spacing. After loading a Bose-Einstein condensate in the lattice potential, we use a focused electron beam to remove atoms from selected sites. The patterned structure is subsequently imaged by means of scanning electron microscopy. This technique allows one to create arbitrary patterns of mesoscopic atomic ensembles. We find that the patterns are remarkably stable against tunneling diffusion. Such microengineered quantum gases are a versatile resource for applications in quantum simulation, quantum optics, and quantum information processing with neutral atoms.
A homogeneous one-dimensional optical lattice is demonstrated by using a high-precision beam shaper based on a digital micromirror device (DMD) with an imaging system containing a pinhole low-pass filter (LPF). This system is capable of producing a high-quality flattop beam profile to form a standing-wave optical lattice with a 50×50 μm2 flattop region. The periodic potential generated by the optical lattice confines ultracold atoms in Bose-Einstein condensate experiments. We conducted beam shaping tests at several wavelengths by implementing various coherent and incoherent light sources in the visible and infrared wavelength ranges. Experiments produced flattop and other well-controlled beam profiles with 0.2% to 0.26% root-mean-square (RMS) error after applying a digital LPF and nearly flat phase. Several concerns for the system design are presented. First, the energy requirement was determined by power conversion analysis and DMD diffraction efficiency simulation. In addition, a LabVIEW program was written to accelerate the speed of the iterative process for beam profile refinement. Finally, various camera calibrations improved the measurement accuracy. We achieved a 1.25% RMS error flattop beam with diameter of 70.4 μm at the atoms' plane. Other beam profile measurements in different diagnostic planes demonstrated a good intensity uniformity of the optical lattice.
An optical lattice is a periodic light crystal constructed from the standing-wave interference patterns of laser beams. It can be used to store and manipulate quantum degenerate atoms and is an ideal platform for the quantum simulation of many-body physics. A principal feature is that optical lattices are flexible and possess a variety of multidimensional geometries with modifiable band-structure. An even richer landscape emerges when control functions can be applied to the lattice by modulating the position or amplitude with Floquet driving. However, the desire for realizing high-modulation bandwidths while preserving extreme lattice stability has been difficult to achieve. In this paper, we demonstrate an effective solution that consists of overlapping two counterpropagating lattice beams and controlling the phase and intensity of each with independent acousto-optic modulators. Our phase controller mixes sampled light from both lattice beams with a common optical reference. This dual heterodyne locking method allows exquisite determination of the lattice position, while also removing parasitic phase noise accrued as the beams travel along separate paths. We report up to 50dB suppression in lattice phase noise in the 0.1Hz - 1Hz band along with significant suppression spanning more than four decades of frequency. When integrated, the absolute phase diffusion of the lattice position is only 10Å over 10 s. This method permits precise, high-bandwidth modulation (above 50kHz) of the optical lattice intensity and phase. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach by executing intricate time-varying phase profiles for atom interferometry.
Abstract Imaging is central to gaining microscopic insight into physical systems, and new microscopy methods have always led to the discovery of new phenomena and a deeper understanding of them. Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide a quantum simulation platform, featuring a variety of advanced detection tools including direct optical imaging while pinning the atoms in the lattice1,2. However, this approach suffers from the diffraction limit, high optical density and small depth of focus, limiting it to two-dimensional (2D) systems. Here we introduce an imaging approach where matter wave optics magnifies the density distribution before optical imaging, allowing 2D sub-lattice-spacing resolution in three-dimensional (3D) systems. By combining the site-resolved imaging with magnetic resonance techniques for local addressing of individual lattice sites, we demonstrate full accessibility to 2D local information and manipulation in 3D systems. We employ the high-resolution images for precision thermodynamics of Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices as well as studies of thermalization dynamics driven by thermal hopping. The sub-lattice resolution is demonstrated via quench dynamics within the lattice sites. The method opens the path for spatially resolved studies of new quantum many-body regimes, including exotic lattice geometries or sub-wavelength lattices3–6, and paves the way for single-atom-resolved imaging of atomic species, where efficient laser cooling or deep optical traps are not available, but which substantially enrich the toolbox of quantum simulation of many-body systems.