• Physics 15, s120
An optical tweezer with a stroboscopic twist can lure chilly atoms in lattices of all shapes.
An optical tweezer array is a staple instrument for trapping and controlling the positions of atoms in quantum analysis functions. Interfering, counterpropagating lasers can carry out an analogous operate by creating “optical lattices.” The previous instrument suffers from having a possible that varies from website to website, limiting the flexibility of the atoms to maneuver round. The latter instrument creates uniform potentials however restricts the form to some predefined geometry. Now Zoe Yan of Princeton College and her colleagues present that they will create arbitrarily formed, reconfigurable 2D atom lattices with uniform potentials [1]. Such traps are fascinating for simulating quantum spin interactions in digital fashions and exploring the behaviors of atoms in methods with complicated topologies.
Yan and her colleagues create their atom arrays by sequentially including traces of atoms till the lattice is full. They load as much as 50 chilly lithium atoms into an optical tweezer. They then generate the primary line of their array utilizing a vibrating transducer, which may break up and deflect a single laser beam such that it turns right into a line of sunshine spots. Subsequent traces of the array are made with one other transducer, programmed to flash on and off like a strobe mild, with every line illuminated for a fraction of the strobe cycle. The result’s a time-averaged 2D lure potential, the place every website is independently managed, overcoming the nonuniformity drawback that earlier experiments with optical tweezer arrays skilled.
Utilizing their method, the workforce has created rectangular, triangular, and octagonal-ring-shaped arrays of atoms, which they are saying might be used to discover the behaviors of unique states of matter, comparable to chiral spin liquids.
–Rachel Berkowitz
Rachel Berkowitz is a Corresponding Editor for Physics Journal primarily based in Vancouver, Canada.
References
- Z. Yan et al., “Two-dimensional programmable tweezer arrays of fermions,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 123201 (2022).
