Pushing quantum-gas microscopes to their limit; understading the limits of deconvolution in single atom imaging.*

Quantum-gas microscopes have provided many new insights into many-body physics in the past decade. In these setups, atoms are detected in a two-dimensional optical lattice via fluorescence imaging by a high-NA microscope objective. In our study, we compare three different deconvolution techniques to reconstruct the atomic lattice occupation, using simulated quantum-gas microscope images of single atoms in an optical lattice. Using a local iterative deconvolution algorithm, Wiener deconvolution and the Lucy-Richardson deconvolution algorithm, we investigate which deconvolution method is best capable of resolving the atomic lattice occupation as a function of signal-to-noise ratio and lattice filling. To test the limits of these techniques we then study the impact of inhomogeneous fluorescence and vary the imaging resolution and lattice spacing. We will also compare our simulation results with images of Mott insulators and thermal samples of from our two quantum-gas microscopes using bosonic ⁸⁷Rb and fermionic ⁴⁰K.