Group Seminar via Zoom: Single Atom Preparation in Strontium Tweezer Arrays

Kevin Wang, Columbia University, New York, USA
Group seminar via Zoom
Thursday, February 22, 03:00 pm (MEZ)

Abstract: I present the development of an experimental platform for trapping neutral strontium atoms in optical tweezer arrays generated by holographic metasurfaces. In contrast to conventional bulk optics, metasurfaces offer an exciting new avenue for the creation of versatile trapping potentials for cold atom experiments. Here we explore and characterize parity projection and cooling of strontium-88 atoms in metasurface-generated optical tweezer traps at 520 nm, a magic wavelength for the 1S0 - 3P1 intercombination line. We achieve around 50% single-atom loading and over 99% fidelities in single atom detection. Leveraging the intricate level structure of strontium atoms, we are working towards the realization of collective phenomena such as super- and subradiance in the order atomic arrays, which may enable future applications as atomic quantum memories.