Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 18, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Light scattering for thermometry of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice
J Ruostekoski1, C J Foot, A B Deb
1School of Mathematics, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
We propose a method of using off-resonant light scattering to measure the temperature of fermionic atoms tightly confined in a two-dimensional optical-lattice potential. We show that fluctuations of the intensity in the far-field diffraction pattern arising from thermal correlations of the atoms can be accurately detected above the shot noise by collecting photons scattered in a forward direction, with the diffraction maxima blocked. The sensitivity of this method of thermometry is enhanced by an additional harmonic trapping potential.
Related Concept Videos
The de Broglie Wavelength
X-ray Crystallography
Diffraction
Diffraction is the change in the direction of travel experienced by an electromagnetic wave when it encounters a physical barrier whose dimensions are comparable to those of the wavelength of the light. X-rays are electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths about as long as the distance between neighboring...
Atomic Spectroscopy: Effects of Temperature
At thermal equilibrium, the relative populations of excited and ground state atoms can be estimated using the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. For example, an increase in temperature from...

