Imaging a single atom in a time-of-flight experiment

Details Imaging a single atom in a time-of-flight experiment Imaging a single atom in a time-of-flight experiment

2010-02-11

arxiv.org/abs/1002.2311v2

New Journal of Physics 12, 053028 (2010)

Physics

Condensed Matter

Quantum Gases

14 pages, 8 figures

Scientific paper

We perform fluorescence imaging of a single 87Rb atom after its release from an optical dipole trap. The time-of-flight expansion of the atomic spatial density distribution is observed by accumulating many single atom images. The position of the atom is revealed with a spatial resolution close to 1 micrometer by a single photon event, induced by a short resonant probe. The expansion yields a measure of the temperature of a single atom, which is in very good agreement with the value obtained by an independent measurement based on a release-and-recapture method. The analysis presented in this paper provides a way of calibrating an imaging system useful for experimental studies involving a few atoms confined in a dipole trap.

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