Imaging a single atom in a time-of-flight experiment
Abstract
We perform fluorescence imaging of a single 87Rb atom after its release from an optical dipole trap. The time-of-flight expansion of the atomic spatial density distribution is observed by accumulating many single atom images. The position of the atom is revealed with a spatial resolution close to 1 micrometer by a single photon event, induced by a short resonant probe. The expansion yields a measure of the temperature of a single atom, which is in very good agreement with the value obtained by an independent measurement based on a release-and-recapture method. The analysis presented in this paper provides a way of calibrating an imaging system useful for experimental studies involving a few atoms confined in a dipole trap.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1002.2311,
title = {Imaging a single atom in a time-of-flight experiment},
author = {A. Fuhrmanek and A. M. Lance and C. Tuchendler and P. Grangier and Y. R. P. Sortais and A. Browaeys},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1002.2311},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
14 pages, 8 figures