Phase-Noise-Induced Heating in Optical Lattices

We experimentally and theoretically study the origin of heating in optical lattices by disentangling the respective roles of intensity and phase noise depending on the lattice parameters. While intensity noise is widely identified as a major limiting factor, we show that phase noise can become the dominant heating source, especially for light atoms and deep optical lattices. We provide a simple theoretical framework to predict the phase-noise-induced heating from the power spectral density of the laser phase noise, which can be measured experimentally. We show that such predictions can accurately reproduce the measured heating rates of lithium-6 atoms in a triangular lattice. Our approach is readily generalized to other lattice geometries and atomic species.