Lithium Lab

Quantum simulation with programmable optical lattices

Optical lattices are one of the most powerful platforms for quantum processors, particularly for quantum simulations. They are created from periodically structured laser light, which creates a conservative potential for neutral atoms. Paired with microscopic tools, this setup realizes coherent many-body systems with single-particle control and readout, unparalleled in size and scalability. With this experiment we want to combine the tools from optical lattices and optical tweezers to create a versatile system, where arbitrary initial states can be prepared, evolved within a programmable optical lattice, and read out with single-atom resolution.

Our setup is built in a compact way, aiming to reach fast cycle times without the need for optical transport. Atoms are laser cooled and loaded into an optical lattice with a high-resolution microscope objective that enables us to image each site of the optical lattice.