Thesis defense of Félix FAISANT

Thesis defense of Félix FAISANT, PhD student in the Quantum gases group of the Laboratoire Charles Fabry, on Wednesday 04 December 2024 at 1:30-2:00pm in the Auditorium of the Institut d'Optique Graduate School in Palaiseau, on the topic: "Building a strontium quantum gas microscope."

Abstracts: "In this dissertation, we describe the progress made on the strontium quantum gas microscope built at the Laboratoire Charles Fabry. This experiment is aimed at realizing a two-dimensional lattice quantum gas and observing it by fluorescence microscopy capable of resolving the individual atoms of the gas. This system is described by the Bose-Hubbard model. The goal is to study the out-of-equillibrium dynamics of this system, in particular the propagation of correlations in the quantum critical region associated with the Mott transition.

We present the experimental setup: magneto-optical traps, transport between the two chambers over 30cm, optical lattices at 1064 nm, production of strontium 84 Bose-Einstein condensates, and finally microscopy. We discuss the difficulties encountered in performing fluorescence microscopy of strontium on the intercombination transition and in shallow optical lattices. These difficulties are partly due to the unfavorable differential polarizability of strontium at 1064 nm for the intercombination transition. We propose and realize an experimental configuration which enables efficient fluorescence and cooling of the trapped atoms. Finally, we report on our recent attempts at performing fluorescence microscopy in these conditions."