https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2015-50336-5
Regular Article
Creating arbitrary 2D arrays of single atoms for the simulation of spin systems with Rydberg states
Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut dOptique, CNRS, Univ. Paris Sud 11, 2 avenue Augustin Fresnel, 91127 Palaiseau cedex, France
a e-mail: henninglabuhn@yahoo.de
Received: 31 December 2015
Revised: 31 July 2016
Published online: 19 December 2016
We present an experimental setup for creating arbitrary two-dimensional arrays of optical microtraps to trap single atoms for experiments with Rydberg atoms. We use a spatial light modulator to manipulate the spatial phase of a far red-detuned optical dipole trap beam, which allows us to create arbitrary arrays of optical microtraps, by focusing the beam with an in-vacuum high numerical-aperture aspheric lens. We load atoms in the microtraps from a dilute cloud of cold atoms, having at most one atom in each trap due to fast light-assisted collisions. Real-time analysis of the atomic fluorescence with a sensitive CCD camera allows us to determine the filling of each trap individually with a >10 Hz rate. We can create strong interactions between the atoms by exciting them to Rydberg states, with an efficiency of single atom resolved Rydberg detection of >95%.
© EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag, 2016
