📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

We introduce a new method, rooted in estimation theory, to detect individual atoms in site-resolved images of microtrap arrays, such as optical lattices or optical tweezers arrays. Using labelled test images, we demonstrate drastic improvement of the detection accuracy compared to the popular method based on Wiener deconvolution when the inter-site distance is comparable to the radius of the point spread function. The runtime of our method scales approximately linearly with the number of sites, and remains well below 100 ms for an array of 100 x 100 sites on a desktop computer. It is therefore fully compatible with a real-time usage. Finally, we propose a rigorous definition for the signal-to-noise ratio of the problem, and show that it can be used as a predictor for the detection error rate. Our work opens the prospect for future experiments with increased array sizes, or reduced inter-site distances.