Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 19: Ultracold atoms III: Manipulation and detection / Rydbergatoms (with Q)

A 19.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 17:00–17:15, Audi-B

Light Sheet Fluorescence Imaging of Cold Atoms — •Robert Bücker¹, Aurélien Perrin¹, Stephanie Manz¹, Thomas Betz¹, Christian Koller¹, Wolfgang Rohringer¹, Martin Göbel¹, Jörg Rottmann², Thorsten Schumm¹, and Jörg Schmiedmayer¹ — ¹Atominstitut der Österreichischen Universitäten, TU Wien, Stadionallee 2, A-1020 Vienna, Austria — ²Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 12, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Fluorescence imaging with illumination by a light sheet is commonly used in optical microscopy of biological specimen. We transfer this approach to detection of ultracold Bosonic gases in an atom chip experiment. During time of flight, the expanding cloud pierces a thin horizontal sheet of near-resonant light. Scattered photons are collected by an imaging objective and detected by an electron-multiplying CCD. This scheme allows for extremely low background and high sensitivity unattainable with conventional methods. By autocorrelation analysis we confirm the efficient detection of single atoms within dilute clouds at a spatial resolution on the order of 10 µm, limited by stochastic motion of the atoms during interaction time. Time-of-flight imaging on a single-atom level paves the way for studying second-order correlations in the various regimes of low-dimensional degenerate Bose gases feasible in our experiment.