Preparation of Ultracold Atom Clouds at the Shot Noise Level

Phys Rev Lett. 2016 Aug 12;117(7):073604. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.073604. Epub 2016 Aug 12.

Abstract

We prepare number stabilized ultracold atom clouds through the real-time analysis of nondestructive images and the application of feedback. In our experiments, the atom number N∼10^{6} is determined by high precision Faraday imaging with uncertainty ΔN below the shot noise level, i.e., ΔN<sqrt[N]. Based on this measurement, feedback is applied to reduce the atom number to a user-defined target, whereupon a second imaging series probes the number stabilized cloud. By this method, we show that the atom number in ultracold clouds can be prepared below the shot noise level.