Measurement of the atom number distribution in an optical tweezer using single-photon counting

A Fuhrmanek (1) , Yvan R. P. Sortais (1) , Philippe Grangier (1) , Antoine Browaeys (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Optique quantique

We demonstrate in this paper a method to reconstruct the atom number distribution of a cloud containing a few tens of cold atoms. The atoms are first loaded from a magneto-optical trap into a microscopic optical dipole trap and then released in a resonant light probe where they undergo a Brownian motion and scatter photons. We count the number of photon events detected on an image intensifier. Using the response of our detection system to a single atom as a calibration, we extract the atom number distribution when the trap is loaded with more than one atom. The atom number distribution is found to be compatible with a Poisson distribution.

Domains: Quantum Physics [quant-ph]; Optics [physics.optics]

A Fuhrmanek, Yvan R. P. Sortais, Philippe Grangier, Antoine Browaeys. Measurement of the atom number distribution in an optical tweezer using single-photon counting. Physical Review A : Atomic, molecular, and optical physics [1990-2015], 2010, 82, pp.23623 / arXiv:0805.3510. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevA.82.023623⟩. ⟨hal-00568784v2⟩