In-trap fluorescence detection of atoms in a microscopic dipole trap

Abstract

We investigate fluorescence detection using a standing wave of blue-detuned light of one or more atoms held in a deep, microscopic dipole trap. The blue-detuned standing wave realizes a Sisyphus laser cooling mechanism so that an atom can scatter many photons while remaining trapped. When imaging more than one atom, the blue detuning limits loss due to inelastic light-assisted collisions. Using this standing wave probe beam, we demonstrate that we can count from one to the order of 100 atoms in the microtrap with sub-poissonian precision.

13 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Single-Atom Resolved Fluorescence Imaging of an Atomic Mott Insulator
• Cooperative atom-light interaction in a blockaded Rydberg ensemble
• Observation and measurement of "giant" dispersive optical non-linearities in an ensemble of cold Rydberg atoms
• Phase shift of a weak coherent beam induced by a single atom
• Measurement of the atom number distribution in an optical tweezer using single photon counting

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Direct Measurements of Collisional Dynamics in Cold Atom Triads
• Zeeman-insensitive cooling of a single atom to its two-dimensional motional ground state in tightly focused optical tweezers