Imaging cold atoms with shot-noise and diffraction limited holography
arXiv:1402.6977 · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/16/9/093064
Abstract
We theoretically develop and experimentally demonstrate a holographic method for imaging cold atoms at the diffraction and photon shot noise limits. Aided by a double point source reference field, a simple iterative algorithm robustly removes the twin image of an Rb cold atom sample during the image reconstruction. Shot-noise limited phase shift and absorption images are consistently retrieved at various probe detunings, and during the laser cooling process. We consistently resolve less than 2 mrad phase shift ( attenuation) of the probe light, outperforming shot-noise limited phase-contrast (absorption) imaging by a factor of 4 or more if the same camera is used without pixel saturation. We discuss the possible extension of this work for precise phase imaging of dense atomic gases, and for off-resonant probing of multiple atoms in optical lattices.
16 pages, 4 figures. An inaccurate statement has been corrected
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