Super-resolution microscopy of cold atoms in optical lattices

Abstract: Super-resolution microscopy has revolutionized the fields of chemistry and biology by resolving features at the molecular level. With cold atoms, such a scheme can be applied to the length scale of atomic wavefunction and to perform quantum control. Here we report super-resolution imaging based on nonlinear response of optical pumping. With this technique the atomic density distribution can be imaged with a half-width-at-half-maximum resolution of 16(2) nm and a localization precision below 0.5 nm. The short optical pumping pulse of 1.4 us enables us to resolve fast atomic motion in the lattice. A surprising application of our scheme is the emergence of moiré patterns on the atomic cloud, which we show to be immensely magnified images of the atomic cloud.

other condensed mattersoft condensed matterstatistical mechanicsstrongly correlated electronssuperconductivitygeneral relativity and quantum cosmologyHEP - theorymathematical physicschaotic dynamicsfluid dynamicsquantum physics

Audience: researchers in the topic

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