Patterned Rydberg excitation and ionization with a spatial light modulator

Abstract

We demonstrate the ability to excite atoms at well-defined, programmable locations in a magnetooptical trap, either to the continuum (ionization), or to a Rydberg state. To this end, excitation laser light is shaped into arbitrary intensity patterns with a spatial light modulator. These optical patterns are sensitive to aberrations of the phase of the light field, occurring while traversing the optical beamline. These aberrations are characterized and corrected without observing the actual light field in the vacuum chamber.

Three-level rate equations in cold, disordered Rydberg gases

“…Rydberg excitation was studied experimentally using a setup described previously [21,22]. In short, 85 Rb atoms are trapped and cooled in a standard magneto-optical trap, resulting in typical atomic densities of 10 16 /m 3 and temperatures of 0.2 mK.…”

“…The red laser beam can be spatially shaped using a spatial light modulator [22] in various ways but in the experiments reported here the spatial shape was a single Gaussian with a rms radius of 25 µm. This shaped red beam crosses the blue beam at the center of the MOT, where the rms sizes of the blue beam are 7 µm ×1.8 mm.…”

Linked and knotted synthetic magnetic fields

“…[59][60][61], where linked and knotted optical vortex lines were realised in laser beams as a superposition of Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes. These superpositions of LG modes are usually obtained by the use of Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs) [62][63][64][65][66][67][68]. LG beams are characterised by their azimuthal, n, and radial, p, indices, and we will denote a single LG mode as L pn , with the full definition of a LG mode discussed in Appendix B.…”

Optical techniques for Rydberg physics in lattice geometries

“…We refer to spatial addressing as the ability of shaping the spatial intensity distribution of laser light, for the purpose of creating trapping geometries or to selectively excite atoms. There exists a multitude of different realizations, either static or dynamic: dipole trap arrays generated by microlens arrays [79], beam steering with acousto-optical modulators [23], coupling atoms to optical waveguides [80], using digital mirror devices (DMDs) in a binary amplitude modulation [81,82] or holographic mode [83,84], projecting a binary mask [85], or using liquid-crystal spatial light modulators (SLM) [86,87].…”