Holographic Optical Tweezers for Arrays of Single Atoms

Aaron Holman, Yuan Xu, Ximo Sun +6 more

Thierry Lahaye

Hyosub Kim, Woojun Lee, Jaewook Ahn

We report a new method to load N=20 single-atoms near-deterministically (90% for 3-by-3 square and 80% for N=19 ring lattice) in 2D lattices, using dynamic holographic optical tweezers implemented with a 2D liquid-crystal spatial-light modulator.

Yichao Yu, Lee R. Liu, Kenneth Wang +4 more

Yuki Torii Chew, Martin Poitrinal, Takafumi Tomita +4 more

Neutral atoms trapped in microscopic optical tweezers have emerged as a growing platform for quantum science. Achieving homogeneity over the tweezers array is an important technical requirement, and our research focuses on improving it for holographic arrays generated with a spatial light modulator. We present a series of optimization methods to calculate better holograms, fueled by precise measurement schemes. These innovations enable to achieve intensity homogeneity with a relative standard deviation of 0.3%, shape variations below 0.5%, and positioning errors within 70 nm. Such ultraprecise holographic optical tweezers arrays allow for the most demanding applications in quantum science with atomic arrays.

Dustin Stuart, Axel Kuhn

We demonstrate the trapping and manipulation of single neutral atoms in reconfigurable arrays of optical tweezers. Our approach offers unparalleled speed by using a Texas instruments digital micro-mirror device as a holographic amplitude modulator with a frame rate of 20 000 per second. We show the trapping of static arrays of up to 20 atoms, as well as transport of individually selected atoms over a distance of 25 μ m with laser cooling and 4 μ m without. We discuss the limitations of the technique and the scope for technical improvements.