We investigate experimentally the entropy transfer between two distinguishable atomic quantum gases at ultralow temperatures. Exploiting a species-selective trapping potential, we are able to control the entropy of one target gas in presence of a second auxiliary gas. With this method, we drive the target gas into the degenerate regime in conditions of controlled temperature by transferring entropy to the auxiliary gas. We envision that our method could be useful both to achieve the low entropies required to realize new quantum phases and to measure the temperature of atoms in deep optical lattices. We verified the thermalization of the two species in a 1D lattice.
We report on the observation of an elementary exchange process in an optically trapped ultracold sample of atoms and Feshbach molecules. We can magnetically control the energetic nature of the process and tune it from endoergic to exoergic, enabling the observation of a pronounced threshold behavior. In contrast to relaxation to more deeply bound molecular states, the exchange process does not lead to trap loss. We find excellent agreement between our experimental observations and calculations based on the solutions of three-body Schrodinger equation in the adiabatic hyperspherical representation. The high efficiency of the exchange process is explained by the halo character of both the initial and final molecular states.
We discuss our recent observation of an atom-dimer Efimov resonance in an ultracold mixture of Cs atoms and Cs_2 Feshbach molecules [Nature Phys. 5, 227 (2009)]. We review our experimental procedure and present additional data involving a non-universal g-wave dimer state, to contrast our previous results on the universal s-wave dimer. We resolve a seeming discrepancy when quantitatively comparing our experimental findings with theoretical results from effective field theory.
Dominant multi-particle interactions can give rise to exotic physical phases with anyonic excitations and phase transitions without local order parameters. In spin systems with a global $SU(N)$ symmetry, cyclic ring-exchange couplings constitute the first higher-order interaction in this class. In this letter we propose a protocol how $SU(N)$ invariant multi-body interactions can be implemented in optical tweezer arrays. We utilize the flexibility to re-arrange the tweezer configuration on time scales short compared to the typical lifetimes, in combination with strong non-local Rydberg interactions. As a specific example we demonstrate how a chiral cyclic ring-exchange Hamiltonian can be implemented in a two-leg ladder geometry. We study its phase diagram using DMRG simulations and identify phases with dominant vector chirality, a ferromagnet, and an emergent spin-$1$ Haldane phase. We also discuss how the proposed protocol can be utilized to implement the strongly frustrated $J-Q$ model, a candidate for hosting a deconfined quantum critical point.
Recently we have reported (Knoop et al. [arXiv:1404.4826]) on an experimental determination of metastable triplet $^4$He+$^{87}$Rb scattering length by performing thermalization measurements for an ultracold mixture in a quadrupole magnetic trap. Here we present our experimental apparatus and elaborate on these thermalization measurements. In particular we give a theoretical description of interspecies thermalization rate for a quadrupole magnetic trap, i. e. in the presence of Majorana heating, and a general procedure to extract the scattering length from the elastic cross section at finite temperature based on knowledge of the $C_6$ coefficient alone. In addition, from our thermalization data we obtain an upper limit of the total interspecies two-body loss rate coefficient of $1.5times 10^{-12}$ cm$^3$s$^{-1}$.
We investigate the decoherence of $^{40}$K impurities interacting with a three-dimensional Fermi sea of $^{6}$Li across an interspecies Feshbach resonance. The decoherence is measured as a function of the interaction strength and temperature using a spin-echo atom interferometry method. For weak to moderate interaction strengths, we interpret our measurements in terms of scattering of K quasiparticles by the Fermi sea and find very good agreement with a Fermi liquid calculation. For strong interactions, we observe significant enhancement of the decoherence rate, which is largely independent of temperature, pointing to behavior that is beyond the Fermi liquid picture.