Microscopic Control and Detection of Ultracold Strontium in Optical-Tweezer Arrays

Optical tweezers provide a versatile platform for the manipulation and detection of single atoms. Here, we use optical tweezers to demonstrate a set of tools for the microscopic control of atomic strontium, which has two valence electrons. Compared to the single-valence-electron atoms typically used...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: M. A. Norcia, A. W. Young, A. M. Kaufman
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2018-12-01
Series:Physical Review X
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041054
Description
Summary:Optical tweezers provide a versatile platform for the manipulation and detection of single atoms. Here, we use optical tweezers to demonstrate a set of tools for the microscopic control of atomic strontium, which has two valence electrons. Compared to the single-valence-electron atoms typically used with tweezers, strontium has a more complex internal state structure with a variety of transition wavelengths and linewidths. We report single-atom loading into an array of subwavelength scale optical tweezers and light-shift-free control of a narrow-linewidth optical transition. We use this transition to perform three-dimensional ground-state cooling and to enable high-fidelity nondestructive imaging of single atoms on subwavelength spatial scales. These capabilities, combined with the rich internal structure of strontium, open new possibilities including tweezer-based metrology, new quantum computing architectures, and new paths to low-entropy many-body physics.
ISSN:2160-3308