A Single Atom Thermometer for Ultracold Gases

Abstract: We use single or few Cs atoms as thermometer for an ultracold, thermal Rb cloud. Observing the thermometer atoms' thermalization with the cold gas using spatially resolved fluorescence detection, we find an interesting situation, where a fraction of thermometer atoms thermalizes with the cloud while the other fraction remains unaffected. We compare release-recapture measurements of the thermometer atoms to Monte-Carlo simulations while correcting for the non-thermalized fraction, and recover the cold cloud's temperature. The temperatures obtained are verified by independent time-of-flight measurements of the cold cloud's temperature. We also check the reliability of our simulations by first numerically modelling the unperturbed in-trap motion of single atoms in absence of the cold cloud, and second by performing release-recapture thermometry on the cold cloud itself. Our findings pave the way for local temperature probing of quantum systems in non-equilibrium situations.