An ytterbium quantum gas microscope with narrow-line laser cooling

Abstract

We demonstrate site-resolved imaging of individual bosonic Yb 174 atoms in a Hubbard-regime twodimensional optical lattice with a short lattice constant of 266 nm. To suppress the heating by probe light with the 1 S 0 -1 P 1 transition of the wavelength λ=399 nm for high-resolution imaging and preserve atoms at the same lattice sites during the fluorescence imaging, we simultaneously cool atoms by additionally applying narrow-line optical molasses with the 1 S 0 -3 P 1 transition of the wavelength λ=556 nm. We achieve a low temperature of T 7.4 13 K ( ) m = , corresponding to a mean oscillation quantum number along the horizontal axes of 0.22(4) during the imaging process. We detect, on average, 200 fluorescence photons from a single atom within a 400 ms exposure time, and estimate a detection fidelity of 87(2)%. The realization of a quantum gas microscope with enough fidelity for Yb atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice opens up the possibilities for studying various kinds of quantum many-body systems such as Bose and Fermi gases, and their mixtures, and also long-rangeinteracting systems such as Rydberg states.

Imaging and addressing of individual fermionic atoms in an optical lattice

“…However, two important tools have been lacking: imaging and addressing fermionic atoms at the single-site and single-atom level [9]. When applied to bosonic atoms, these tools have already been dramatically successful [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].High-resolution imaging and manipulation of ultracold fermions solves several outstanding problems at once. First, in-situ spatial probes directly reveal the order parameter of insulating phases, magnetic domain formation, and other correlations inaccessible in time-of-flight imaging [13,14,19].…”

“…However, two important tools have been lacking: imaging and addressing fermionic atoms at the single-site and single-atom level [9]. When applied to bosonic atoms, these tools have already been dramatically successful [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Population imbalance in the extended Fermi-Hubbard model

“…The ability to trap and cool fermionic atoms with large magnetic moment has made it possible to simulate systems with long-range interactions with controllable magnitude [23][24][25][26] and image them through a quantum gas microscope [27][28][29][30][31] developed recently. Our results can thus be readily verified experimentally.…”

Quantum gas microscopy of ytterbium: cool me twice

“…Not surprisingly, there has been a flurry of activity to extend this technique to a variety of atomic species. Most recently, Yamamoto et al [10] demonstrate a QGM in ytterbium, a species that promises to be a strong candidate for applications to metrology and studies of exotic quantum magnetic phases.…”

“…Yamamoto et al [10] present an elegant solution that is uniquely suited to the alkaline-Earth family of atoms such as ytterbium or strontium. The alkaline-Earth elements are characterized by two s-shell valence electons, causing their optical transitions to segregate into two distinct manifolds corresponding to the singlet and triplet electronic states.…”