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Cavity-enabled real-time observation of individual atomic collisions
Arrays of individual neutral atoms represent a promising platform for quantum information processing due to their scalability, arbitrary connectivity, and long coherence times. These features are enabled in large part by the simple trapping and high-fidelity fluorescence imaging of individual atoms within tweezer traps. In our lab, we use strong dispersive coupling to a high-cooperativity cavity to demonstrate fast and non-destructive number-resolved detection of atoms in optical tweezers. We observe individual atom-
atom collisions, quantum state jumps, and atom loss events with a time resolution of 100 μs through continuous measurement of cavity transmission, as shown in Figure 1. These observations enable adaptive feedback conditioned on cavity transmission to load atoms into dipole traps with 92% efficiency, better than the typical loading efficiency of 50% relying on collisional blockade.
Figure 1: Real-time measurement of atomic dynamics. Several atoms are loaded into a dipole trap confined within an optical cavity. Loss and heating due to rapid collisions between atoms are observed with 100 μs time resolution by changes in cavity transmission, T. Atom number (right label) is indicated by horizontal dashed lines that denote levels of 1-T that correspond to a certain atom number. Continuous and real-time observation of atomic dynamics is a new tool for the study of fundamental atomic interactions and a powerful technique for future atomic quantum information processors.