ﾏﾙﾃｨﾝ ｻﾝﾃｨｱｺﾞ ﾐﾗﾝﾀﾞ, Martin Miranda
In this thesis I report a microscope system for fluorescence imaging of ultra-cold ytterbium atoms trapped in a two-dimensional optical lattice with single-site resolution.Having a rich variety of isotopes, ytterbium atoms trapped in two-dimensional optical lattices are a promising tool to study many-body quantum phenomena resulting from strongly interacting systems.In particular, quantum simulators using fermionic atoms are useful for studying the Fermi-Hubbard model, which is expected to be the key to elucidate the mechanism of high temperature superconductors.In order to observe atoms trapped in an optical lattice, a large number of photons is required to obtain a well resolved image.In contrast with to the conventional method of lasercooling the atoms while observing their fluorescence, in this experiment a deep potential was created using a combination of a shallow ground-state and a deep excited-state potentials, which confines the heated atoms during the imaging process.The resulting quantum gas microscope was able to resolve individual lattice sites in an optical lattice with a 544 nm spacing.And I'm not happy with all the analyses that go with just the classical theory, because nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it's a wonderful problem, because it doesn't look so easy.
•Mar 1, 2016•0 citations