Counting atoms in a deep optical microtrap

Abstract

We demonstrate a method to count small numbers of atoms held in a deep, microscopic optical dipole trap by collecting fluorescence from atoms exposed to a standing wave of light that is blue detuned from resonance. While scattering photons, the atoms are also cooled by a Sisyphus mechanism that results from the spatial variation in light intensity. The use of a small blue detuning limits the losses due to light assisted collisions, thereby making the method suitable for counting several atoms in a microscopic volume.

References in corpus (2)

• Probing the Superfluid to Mott Insulator Transition at the Single Atom Level
• Inserting two atoms into a single optical micropotential

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Coherence and Raman sideband cooling of a single atom in an optical tweezer
• Quantum gas microscopy with spin, atom-number and multi-layer readout
• 3D Sisyphus Cooling of Trapped Ions
• Dynamics of two atoms undergoing light-assisted collisions in an optical microtrap
• D1 magic wavelength tweezers for scaling atom arrays
• Zeeman-insensitive cooling of a single atom to its two-dimensional motional ground state in tightly focused optical tweezers
• In-trap fluorescence detection of atoms in a microscopic dipole trap
• Feshbach Spectroscopy of Cs Atom Pairs in Optical Tweezers
• Quantifying Light-assisted Collisions in Optical Tweezers Across the Hyperfine Spectrum