• Open Access

Low-Entropy States of Neutral Atoms in Polarization-Synthesized Optical Lattices

Carsten Robens, Jonathan Zopes, Wolfgang Alt, Stefan Brakhane, Dieter Meschede, and Andrea Alberti
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 065302 – Published 8 February 2017
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Abstract

We create low-entropy states of neutral atoms by utilizing a conceptually new optical-lattice technique that relies on a high-precision, high-bandwidth synthesis of light polarization. Polarization-synthesized optical lattices provide two fully controllable optical lattice potentials, each of them confining only atoms in either one of the two long-lived hyperfine states. By employing one lattice as the storage register and the other one as the shift register, we provide a proof of concept using four atoms that selected regions of the periodic potential can be filled with one particle per site. We expect that our results can be scaled up to thousands of atoms by employing an atom-sorting algorithm with logarithmic complexity, which is enabled by polarization-synthesized optical lattices. Vibrational entropy is subsequently removed by sideband cooling methods. Our results pave the way for a bottom-up approach to creating ultralow-entropy states of a many-body system.

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  • Received 8 August 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.065302

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Carsten Robens, Jonathan Zopes, Wolfgang Alt, Stefan Brakhane, Dieter Meschede, and Andrea Alberti*

  • Institut für Angewandte Physik, Universität Bonn, Wegelerstrasse 8, D-53115 Bonn, Germany

  • *alberti@iap.uni-bonn.de

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Issue

Vol. 118, Iss. 6 — 10 February 2017

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