One of the core experimental strategies in the cold atom system is high-resolution single-particle imaging. In the past 10 years, the microscopic imaging technology of the cold atom system has actually developed quickly. Due to the intricacy of cold atom experiments, it is incredibly challenging to apply super-resolution imaging technology to cold atom systems.
The group of academician GUO Guangcan of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has actually made crucial progress in the research of cold atom super-resolution imaging. The group accomplished super-resolution imaging of a single ion in an ion trap system. The results were published in Physical Review Letters.
One of the core experimental strategies in the cold atom system is high-resolution single-particle imaging. In the past ten years, the microscopic imaging technology of the cold atom system has actually developed quickly. To study such problems needs optical super-resolution imaging.
Optical super-resolution imaging has established into a fully grown tool in the fields of chemistry and biology. Due to the complexity of cold atom experiments, it is extremely challenging to apply super-resolution imaging innovation to cold atom systems. Prior to this, the world has not yet made progress on the direct super-resolution imaging of single atoms (ions).
In this study, the researchers embraced the essence of the Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy in the classical super-resolution imaging field, and combined it with the atomic quantum state initialization and reading technology of the cold atom system. They understood super-resolved imaging of a single cold atom (ion) directly for the very first time.
Experimental results showed that the spatial resolution of the imaging method can surpass the diffraction limitation by more than one order, and the imaging resolution of 175 nm can be accomplished by utilizing an unbiased lens with a mathematical aperture of only 0.1.
To even more demonstrate the time resolution benefit of this method, the scientists accomplished both a time resolution of 50 ns and a single ion positioning accuracy of 10 nm, and used this approach to plainly catch the fast harmonic oscillations of the ion in the trap. Theoretically, by increasing the numerical aperture of the imaging goal and the center termination ratio of the depleted light (the doughnut area), the spatial resolution can be even more improved to below 10 nm.
This experimental strategy can be extended to the multi-body and correlation measurement of cold atom systems, and has great compatibility with other cold atom systems. It can be used to optical lattices, neutral atom optical tweezers, and cold atom-ion hybrid systems.
Referral: “Super-resolved Imaging of a Single Cold Atom on a Nanosecond Timescale” by Zhong-Hua Qian, Jin-Ming Cui, Xi-Wang Luo, Yong-Xiang Zheng, Yun-Feng Huang, Ming-Zhong Ai, Ran He, Chuan-Feng Li and Guang-Can Guo, 23 December 2021, Physical Review Letters.DOI: 10.1103/ PhysRevLett.127.263603.