Progress toward atomic force sensor to detect Bloch oscillations

We present progress towards an atomic oscillating-force sensor that will use non-destructive, continuous measurement techniques to probe interactions between Yb atoms and external forces. The atoms will experience Bloch oscillations in an intra-cavity optical lattice due to surrounding forces. New fields, such as ultra-light dark matter, can create oscillating forces which would be detected through oscillations in the Bloch frequency [1]. For large Compton frequencies, the dark matter signal would appear as side bands on the gravitational Bloch frequency.



Previous work demonstrated the detection of atomic motion on microsecond and nanometer scales [2]. However, detecting coherent Bloch oscillations requires cooling deep into the ground state of the optical lattice. We present recent work towards implementation of an optical dipole trap for evaporative cooling into the lattice.

[1] A. Arvanitaki, J. Huang, and K. Van Tilburg, “Searching for dilaton dark matter with atomic clocks”, Physical Review D 91, 015015 (2015).

[2] R.D. Niederriter, C. Schulpf, P. Hamilton, “Cavity probe for real-time detection of atom dynamics in an optical lattice”, Physical Review A 102, 051301 (2020).