Light-assisted collisions in tweezer-trapped lanthanides
Abstract
We present a quantitative investigation of one- and two-body light-mediated processes that occur to few erbium atoms in an optical tweezer, when exposed to near-resonant light. In order to study the intertwined effects of recoil heating, cooling, and light-assisted collisions, we develop a first-principles Monte Carlo algorithm that solves the coupled dynamics of both the internal and external degrees of freedom of the atoms. After validating our theoretical model against experimental data, we use the predictive power of our code to guide our experiment and, in particular, we explore the performance of different transitions of erbium for light-assisted collisions in terms of their efficiency and fidelity for single-atom preparation.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates
Quantum optics and atomic interactions
Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Physical Review Research
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 2
- Publication date
- 26 February 2026
- Language
- EN