Long-lived Bloch oscillations with bosonic Sr atoms and application to gravity measurement at micrometer scale

Abstract

We report on the observation of Bloch oscillations on the unprecedented time scale of severalseconds. The experiment is carried out with ultra-cold bosonic strontium-88 loaded into a vertical optical standing wave. The negligible atom-atom elastic cross section and the absence of spin makes $^{88}$Sr an almost ideal Bose gas insensitive to typical mechanisms of decoherence due to thermalization and to external stray fields. The small size enables precision measurements of forces at micrometer scale. This is a challenge in physics for studies of surfaces, Casimir effects, and searches for deviations from Newtonian gravity predicted by theories beyond the standard model.