Unity Occupation of Sites in a 3D Optical Lattice

An average filling factor of one atom per lattice site has been obtained in a submicron scale far-off-resonance optical lattice (FORL). High site occupation is obtained through a compression sequence that includes laser cooling in a 3D FORL and adiabatic toggling between the 3D FORL and a 1D FORL trap. After the highest filling factor is achieved, laser cooling causes collisional loss from lattice sites with more than one atom. Ultimately 44% of the sites have a single atom cooled to near its vibrational ground state. A theoretical model of site occupation based on Poisson statistics agrees well with the experimental results.