arXiv subjects

Amanda Younes

Publications and source records attributed to Amanda Younes.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Protocol for Shielding-Enhanced Loading of Single Polar Molecules into Optical Tweezers

We propose the high-fidelity preparation of single bosonic molecules in optical tweezers starting from small tweezer-trapped molecular ensembles. Our scheme combines a static electric field and a microwave field to generate strong, tunable, anisotropic interactions that shield the molecules against two-body collisional loss. We show that this shielding eliminates all long-range bound states, preventing three-body recombination. This elimination persists for all microwave ellipticities, including the experimentally practical limit of linear polarization. Application of an additional electric field gradient can be used to induce controlled spilling of strongly interacting molecules out of the trap until one remains. With realistic experimental parameters, we estimate that single tweezer-trapped NaCs molecules can be isolated from a pair with fidelities exceeding 99\%, and $> 95\%$ per site across an array. These results establish collisional shielding with electric fields as an effective tool for preparing highly-filled tweezer arrays of polar molecules.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2025

Hyperfine spectroscopy of optical-cycling transitions in singly ionized thulium

We present a spectroscopic investigation of $^{169}\mathrm{Tm}^+$ that provides two key foundations for its use as a platform for advanced quantum applications. First, we establish the complete spectroscopic road map for optical cycling (including laser cooling) by performing high-resolution spectroscopy on $^{169}\mathrm{Tm}^+$ ions in an ion trap. We characterize the primary $313\,\mathrm{nm}$ and complementary $448/453\,\mathrm{nm}$ cycling transitions, identify the essential near-infrared repumping frequencies, and determine the magnetic-dipole hyperfine $A$ constants for all relevant levels. Second, we report a detailed characterization of a metastable state as a candidate for hosting a robust qubit, performing lifetime measurements and Zeeman-resolved microwave hyperfine spectroscopy with $\mathrm{kHz}$ precision.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2024

Internal state cooling of an atom with thermal light

A near-minimal instance of optical cooling is experimentally presented wherein the internal-state entropy of a single atom is reduced more than twofold by illuminating it with broadband, incoherent light. Since the rate of optical pumping by a thermal state increases monotonically with its temperature, the cooling power in this scenario increases with higher thermal occupation, an example of a phenomenon known as cooling by heating. In contrast to optical pumping by coherent, narrow-band laser light, here we perform the same task with fiber-coupled, broadband sunlight, the brightest laboratory-accessible source of continuous blackbody radiation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Primary quantum thermometry of mm-wave blackbody radiation via induced state transfer in Rydberg states of cold atoms

Rydberg states of alkali atoms are highly sensitive to electromagnetic radiation in the GHz-to-THz regime because their transitions have large electric dipole moments. Consequently, environmental blackbody radiation (BBR) can couple Rydberg states together at $\mu$s timescales. Here, we track the BBR-induced transfer of a prepared Rydberg state to its neighbors and use the evolution of these state populations to characterize the BBR field at the relevant wavelengths, primarily at 130 GHz. We use selective field ionization readout of Rydberg states with principal quantum number $n\sim30$ in $^{85}$Rb and substantiate our ionization signal with a theoretical model. With this detection method, we measure the associated blackbody-radiation-induced time dynamics of these states, reproduce the results with a simple semi-classical population transfer model, and demonstrate that this measurement is temperature sensitive with a statistical sensitivity to the fractional temperature uncertainty of 0.09 Hz$^{-1/2}$, corresponding to 26 K$\cdot$Hz$^{-1/2}$ at room temperature. This represents a calibration-free SI-traceable temperature measurement, for which we calculate a systematic fractional temperature uncertainty of 0.006, corresponding to 2 K at room temperature when used as a primary temperature standard.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2023

Thermal light in confined dimensions for "laser" cooling with unfiltered sunlight

Cooling of systems to sub-kelvin temperatures is usually done using either a cold bath of particles or spontaneous photon scattering from a laser field; in either case, cooling is driven by interaction with a well-ordered, cold (i.e. low entropy) system. However, there have recently been several schemes proposed for ``cooling by heating,'' in which raising the temperature of some mode drives the cooling of the desired system faster. We discuss how to cool a trapped ion to its motional ground state using unfiltered sunlight at $5800\,\mathrm{K}$ to drive the cooling. We show how to treat the statistics of thermal light in a single-mode fiber for delivery to the ion, and show experimentally how the black-body spectrum is strongly modified by being embedded in quasi-one-dimension. Quantitative estimates for the achievable cooling rate with our measured fiber-coupled, low-dimensional sunlight show promise for demonstrating this implementation of cooling by heating.

quant-ph↗