A high resolution ion microscope for cold atoms
Abstract
We report on an ion-optical system that serves as a microscope for ultracold ground state and Rydberg atoms. The system is designed to achieve a magnification of up to 1000 and a spatial resolution in the 100 nm range, thereby surpassing many standard imaging techniques for cold atoms. The microscope consists of four electrostatic lenses and a microchannel plate in conjunction with a delay line detector in order to achieve single particle sensitivity with high temporal and spatial resolution. We describe the design process of the microscope including ion-optical simulations of the imaging system and characterize aberrations and the resolution limit. Furthermore, we present the experimental realization of the microscope in a cold atom setup and investigate its performance by patterned ionization with a structure size down to 2.7 {\mu}m. The microscope meets the requirements for studying various many-body effects, ranging from correlations in cold quantum gases up to Rydberg molecule formation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1701.02915,
title = {A high resolution ion microscope for cold atoms},
author = {Markus Stecker and Hannah Schefzyk and József Fortágh and Andreas Günther},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.02915},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
11 pages, 11 figures