Isotope-agnostic motional ground-state cooling of neutral Yb atoms

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Abstract
Efficient high-fidelity ground-state cooling of motional degrees of freedom is crucial for applications in quantum simulation, computing, and metrology. Here, we demonstrate direct ground-state cooling of fermionic Yb 171 and bosonic Yb 174 atoms in two- and three-dimensional magic-wavelength optical lattices on the ultranarrow clock transition. Its high spectral resolution offers the potential for reaching extremely low temperatures. To ensure efficient cooling, we develop a chirped sideband cooling scheme, where we sweep the clock-laser frequency to mitigate the effects of spatial trap inhomogeneities. We further generalize the theoretical description of sideband spectra to higher-dimensional lattices for precise thermometry. We achieve 2D ground-state fractions of 97 % for Yb 171 with an average motional occupation of n ¯ ≃ 0.015 and provide a direct comparison with Yb 174 , reaching similar cooling performance. Applying the same scheme in 3D results in n ¯ ≃ 0.15 limited by layer-to-layer inhomogeneities in the vertical direction. These results demonstrate efficient motional ground-state cooling in optical lattices, especially for bosonic alkaline-earth(-like) atoms, where other methods are not applicable, opening the door to novel protocols for quantum science applications with neutral atoms.
Funding Information
  • Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (EXC-2111-390814868)
  • Horizon 2020 (803047)
  • Horizon 2020 (731473)
  • Horizon 2020 (101017733)
  • Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (13N15895)
  • Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (101113690)
  • Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung

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