Enhanced loading and progress toward rearranging atoms in a Quantum Matter Synthesizer

In the Quantum Matter Synthesizer (QMS) experiment, we load cesium atoms from a thermal gas into a triangular optical lattice in which we perform cooling and site-resolved imaging. Optical lattice experiments that load from a thermal gas usually begin with atoms occupying around half of the lattice sites due to light assisted collisions that lead to pairwise losses. We are able to achieve a lattice filling fraction above 0.7 by applying a blue detuned optical pumping (OP) beam during degenerate Raman sideband cooling in a triangular lattice. We explore how the filling fraction depends on the OP beam intensity, frequency, and its duration. We will also detail recent progress toward rearranging atoms in the lattice with digital micromirror device (DMD) -generated tweezers and future plans for using the QMS as a node of a quantum network.