Controlling and characterizing single-atom motion in optical tweezers

IQOQI Quantum Seminar

Single-atom trapping in optical tweezers has become an important capability in quantum systems of neutral atoms. I will present our efforts to broaden control of quantum motion in the versatile potential landscape of optical tweezer traps. In our experiments, we laser cool single 87Rb atoms to near their vibrational ground state in an optical tweezer, and use tunneling in a tunable double-well potential to prepare non-classical motion in the state space of a harmonic potential. I will discuss a demonstration of motional-state tomography that uses only time-of-flight combined with quadrature rotation through time evolution in the tweezer potential. Characterizing this technique may aid in the search for quantum behavior of massive levitated particles without an internal spin degree of freedom.

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