https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.03970
We have isolated and tracked very slowly moving individual atoms without the aid of laser cooling. Passive filtering enabled us to carefully select atoms whose three-dimensional velocity vector has a magnitude below v¯/20, where v¯ is the mean velocity of the ensemble. Using a novel photon correlation technique, we could follow the three-dimensional trajectory of single, slowly moving atoms for >1μs within a 25μm field of view, with no obvious limit to the tracking ability while simultaneously observing Rabi oscillations of these single emitters. Our results demonstrate the power and scalability of thermal ensembles for utilization in quantum memories, imaging, and other quantum information applications through bottom-up approaches.
atomic beam is θ =47 ◦. Two cleaved fiber tips are placed on the image plane of the imaging system with a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.42. (b) The involved energy levels. The repump is detuned by ∆ to select a certain group of atoms. (c) The raw coincidences with different time delays from two
SPCMs at ∆ = −80 MHz, corresponding to a velocity of v ≈ 100m/s.
