Trapping of single atoms in metasurface optical tweezer arrays – Nature

Trapping of single atoms in metasurface optical tweezer arrays – Nature

ByWirePaw

Abstract

Optical tweezer arrays have emerged as a key experimental platform1,2 for quantum computation3,4, quantum simulation5,6 and quantum metrology7,8, enabling unprecedented levels of control over single atoms and molecules. The ability to scale such arrays has become a defining challenge. Typically, optical tweezer arrays are generated using acousto-optic deflectors or liquid-crystal spatial light modulators. Fundamental limitations in optical resolution have constrained array sizes to about 10,000 traps9. Metasurfaces10,11, planar photonic devices comprising millions of subwavelength pixels, provide an intriguing alternative for the generation of optical tweezer arrays12. Here we demonstrate the trapping of single strontium atoms in optical tweezer arrays generated via holographic metasurfaces. We realize two-dimensional arrays with more than 100 single atoms, arranged in arbitrary geometries with trap spacings as small as 1.5 μm. The arrays have a high uniformity in terms of trap depth, trap frequency and positional accuracy, rivalling or surpassing existing approaches. This is enabled by highly efficient holographic metasurfaces fabricated from high-refractive-index materials, silicon-rich silicon nitride and titanium dioxide. Through analytical and numerical methods, we find that the subwavelength pixel sizes of these metasurfaces allow scaling of tweezer arrays far beyond current capabilities. As a demonstration, we realize an optical tweezer array with 360,000 traps. These advances overcome a critical barrier to realizing scalable neutral-atom quantum technologies.

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Fig. 1: Metasurface optical tweezer arrays and integration with ultracold Sr atoms.
Trapping of single atoms in metasurface optical tweezer arrays – Nature
Fig. 2: Fluorescence images of Sr atoms trapped in metasurface-generated optical tweezer arrays.
Fig. 3: Single-atom preparation and detection in a 16 × 16 metasurface array.
Fig. 4: Characterizing the uniformity of metasurface arrays via atomic response.
Fig. 5: Performance of pixel-based beam-shaping devices.
Fig. 6: Realization and characterization of a 600 × 600 tweezer array.

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Data availability

The experimental data that supports the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All relevant codes are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank X. Huang and W. Yuan for contributions in the early development of this project; S. C. Malek for help with the development of the SRN materials platform; C.-W. Liu and S. Zhang for experimental assistance; D. Filin and M. Safronova for providing data on the optical polarizability of Sr atoms; A. Asenjo-Garcia, S. Masson and R. Gutierrez-Jauregui for discussions; and T. Yefsah for critical reading of the paper. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (award numbers 1936359, 2040702 and 2004685) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (award numbers FA9550-16-1-0322, FA9550-23-1-0404 and FA9550-24-1-0224). Device fabrication was carried out at the Columbia Nano Initiative cleanroom, at the Advanced Science Research Center Nanofabrication Facility at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Brookhaven National Laboratory, supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (contract number DESC0012704). B.S. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (award number 2021M3H3A1036573). N.Y. acknowledges the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative (grant doi.org/10.37807/GBMF11561). S.W. acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Aaron Holman, Yuan Xu

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Aaron Holman, Ximo Sun, Mingxuan Wang, Bojeong Seo & Sebastian Will

  2. Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Yuan Xu, Jiahao Wu, Zezheng Zhu & Nanfang Yu

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  1. Aaron Holman
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  4. Jiahao Wu
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  9. Sebastian Will
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Contributions

All authors contributed substantially to the work presented in this paper. A.H., X.S., M.W. and B.S. carried out the atomic experiments. Y.X., J.W. and Z.Z. designed and fabricated the metasurfaces. N.Y. and S.W. supervised the study. All authors contributed to the data analysis and writing of the paper.

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Nanfang Yu or Sebastian Will.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 A calculated phase-only hologram and its corresponding focal-plane trap pattern.

a, A phase-only hologram generated by the modified Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm with 4,000 × 4,000 pixels and a pixel size of 290 nm. b, Simulated intensity distribution at the focal plane, showing a Statue of Liberty pattern consisting of 183 traps.

Extended Data Fig. 2 RCWA-calculated phase response and transmission of the SRN meta-atom library consisting of 13 nanopillars with different cross-sectional sizes.

a, Phase response of the meta-atom library as a function of nanopillar width a. b, Transmission or forward scattering efficiency of the meta-atom library. All meta-atoms have a transmission over 95% (marked as the grey dashed line).

Extended Data Fig. 3 Cleanroom fabrication process and SEM images of SRN metasurfaces.

a, Illustration of the CMOS-compatible fabrication process. b, SEM images of the fabricated SRN metasurfaces show minimal defects and clean side walls.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Images of metasurfaces, a laser beam profile, and the beam profile after diffraction by the metasurface.

a, A photo of a 2.32-mm-diameter metasurface by the side of an American one-cent coin. b, A photo of the 3.5-mm-diameter metasurface that generates the 600 × 600 array. c, The profile of a 1.5-mm-diameter beam that is incident onto the metasurface. d, A far-field image of non-diffracted light after aligning the metasurface to the beam. This diagnostic, in tandem with maximizing the diffracted power, ensures good optical alignment.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Single atom preparation and detection in a 4 × 4 metasurface tweezer array.

a, Average of 100 fluorescence images after parity projection. The high uniformity indicates that all traps have an approximately equal chance of being filled with an atom. b, Individual fluorescence image. Trap locations are indicated by dashed boxes. c, Histogram of the number of occupied sites after parity projection; the mean occupancy of a trap, marked by the dashed line, is 49(3)%. d, Determination of the photon count threshold x to distinguish between zero and one atom in a trap. Data points show the photon counts for one specific trap in 500 iterations of the experiment. A darker colour indicates a higher density of points. The threshold value x divides the data into four quadrants, labelled by pij with indices i = 0, 1 and j = 0, 1 indicating the absence (presence) of an atom in the first and second image, respectively. e, Histogram of photon counts across the trap locations of the 4 × 4 array, as marked in b. 500 repetitions of the experiment are averaged. The data allow for the distinction between sites with one and zero atoms with high fidelity. The dashed line marks the averaged threshold value across the array.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Measurements of uniformity in the 16 × 16 array.

a, Measurement of the trap depth via the light shift Δ of the 1S0 – 3P1 resonance in the presence of the trapping field. Data show the resonance for a single trap. b, Positional displacement between observed and target trap locations. c-d, show the measurement of the radial and axial trap frequency, respectively, via parametric heating. All error bars in this figure show 1σ s.e.m. from 20 repetitions of the measurement.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Axial trap frequency measurements.

The axial trap frequencies measured in a 16 × 16 array with 4-μm trap spacing (left) and their statistical spread (right).

Extended Data Fig. 8 Calculation of the effective NA of a pixel-based beam shaping device.

a, The phase profile of a lens with focal length f is emulated by a pixellated phase mask. The individual pixels have a size d. A flat wavefront impinges on the device and it is converted into a focusing wavefront. θm is the maximal angle for which the phase advance between neighbouring pixels stays smaller than π/2. The grey scale indicates the phase shift of the metasurface pixels. b, Zooming into the wavefront advance of individual pixels, following Huygens’ principle, the angle θm is determined by the condition where the wavefront advance between neighboring pixels reaches λ/4 (corresponding to a phase shift of π/2). Δθ denotes the angular separation between neighboring pixels. The colour scale indicates the phase shift of the emerging wavefront behind the metasurface.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Imaging the 600 × 600 tweezer array.

a, Composite image of the full array, stitched together from 126 individual high-resolution images. Each image captures a real-space area of 190 × 140 μm2. The individual images show a discontinuity in the measured light intensity, which arises from imperfections in the imaging system and contributes to the reported tweezer non-uniformity. b, Averaged tweezer spots from the centre and the edges of the array. Each picture averages ~300 traps. Tweezers at the array edges show a pinching as well as a weak halo oriented towards the centre of the array.

Extended Data Table 1 Comparison of beam-shaping devices
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Rasterized image of the 600 × 600 optical tweezer array.

Peer Review file

Supplementary Video 1

Vertical scan of one edge of the 600 × 600 optical tweezer array.

Supplementary Video 2

Zoom-in and zoom-out of the 600 × 600 optical tweezer array.

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Holman, A., Xu, Y., Sun, X. et al. Trapping of single atoms in metasurface optical tweezer arrays.
Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09961-5

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  • Received: 11 November 2024

  • Accepted: 25 November 2025

  • Published: 14 January 2026

  • Version of record: 14 January 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09961-5

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