This project will centre on implementing and characterising the darkground imaging capabilities that we are developing in the lab. This would involve continuing development of an off-resonant laser system, and fabrication of both darkground masks and phase-contrast masks at the ANFF fabrication facility.
An overall goal would be to demonstrate imaging of few atoms in our setup (previous research has achieved ~7). This project would feed in to characterising digital-micromirror-based (DMD) lattices. Imaging of the lattice configurations should be greatly improved with darkground imaging. This should allow for imaging of a lattice at our resolution limit – where quantum tunnelling is an important feature.