Single-atom trapping in a metasurface-lens optical tweezer

Published

August 1, 2022

Author(s)

Ting-Wei Hsu, Wenqi Zhu, Tobias Thiele, Mark Brown, Scott Papp, Amit Agrawal, Cindy Regal

Abstract

Single neutral atoms in optical tweezers have become an important platform for quantum simulation, computing, and metrology [1-3]. With ground-up control similar to trapped ions, individual atoms can be prepared and entangled [2, 4, 5], and the scalability of assembled arrays is promising. In contrast to ions, single neutral atoms rely heavily on optical potentials for trapping, either in lattices or tightly-focused laser beams, termed \optical tweezers". In optical tweezers, high numerical aperture (NA) optics are key, for both creating the trapping potentials and imaging fluorescence to resolve individual atoms [6, 7]. The requisite high-NA optics must have wide field of view (FoV), high focusing efficiency, large chromatic range, long working distance, and simplicity for incorporating into complex optical and vacuum systems. Recent advances in patterned low-loss dielectric metasurfaces have de fined a new paradigm for optical design [8, 9], and have been used for creating large-scale cooling and trapping beams [10], but are yet to be explored for the demanding task of trapping and imaging of single atoms. Here we introduce successful single-atom trapping using a high-NA dielectric metasurface lens as the focusing element. With a relatively simple design we obtain tight con finement of an array of single atoms, and characterize the metasurface trap focus using the atoms. We predict a broad metasurface design space, enabled by expanded element design libraries and multilayer metasurfaces will enable simplified and optimized designs for broad applications in quantum information with neutral atoms.

Citation

PRX Quantum

Volume

3

Issue

3

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.030316

Local Download

Citation

Hsu, T. , Zhu, W. , Thiele, T. , Brown, M. , Papp, S. , Agrawal, A. and Regal, C. (2022), Single-atom trapping in a metasurface-lens optical tweezer, PRX Quantum, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.030316, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=933071 (Accessed November 23, 2024)