고려대학교 물리학과

Imaging and addressing individual atoms in optical lattices with single-site resolution constitute a new approach to the study of quantum many-body problems. It provides microscopic information of quantum many-body states, such as correlation functions, and one can engineer arbitrary density patterns for the study of non-equilibrium quantum dynamics. Here, we report the first realization of the quantum gas microscope of Lithium-7 atoms in a square two-dimensional optical lattice and observation of the unity filling Mott insulator with few thousand atoms. We implement the Raman sideband cooling in the lattice and about 1,000 photons per atom are detected by high numerical aperture (NA=0.65) objective lens. The point spread function (PSF) of the imaging system is measured to be 600 nm (full width half maximum), small enough to resolve the lattice spacing (752 nm). In the talk, we will also introduce our journey (both successful and failed stories) when implementing the state-of-the-art imaging system.