No Arabic abstract
The non-equilibrium dynamics of a gas of cold atoms in which Rydberg states are off-resonantly excited is studied in the presence of noise. The interplay between interaction and off-resonant excitation leads to an initial dynamics where aggregates of excited Rydberg atoms slowly nucleate and grow, eventually reaching long-lived meta-stable arrangements which then relax further on much longer timescales. This growth dynamics is governed by an effective Master equation which permits a transparent and largely analytical understanding of the underlying physics. By means of extensive numerical simulations we study the many-body dynamics and the correlations of the resulting non-equilibrium states in various dimensions. Our results provide insight into the dynamical richness of strongly interacting Rydberg gases in noisy environments, and highlight the usefulness of these kind of systems for the exploration of soft-matter-type collective behaviour.
We study the anisotropic, elliptic expansion of a thermal atomic Bose gas released from an anisotropic trapping potential, for a wide range of interaction strengths across a Feshbach resonance. We show that in our system this hydrodynamic phenomenon is for all interaction strengths fully described by a microscopic kinetic model with no free parameters. The success of this description crucially relies on taking into account the reduced thermalising power of elastic collisions in a strongly interacting gas, for which we derive an analytical theory. We also perform time-resolved measurements that directly reveal the dynamics of the energy transfer between the different expansion axes.
The experimental realization of stable, ultracold Fermi gases near a Feshbach resonance allows to study gases with attractive interactions of essentially arbitrary strength. They extend the classic paradigm of BCS into a regime which has never been accessible before. We review the theoretical concepts which have been developed in this context, including the Tan relations and the notion of fixed points at zero density, which are at the origin of universality. We discuss in detail the universal thermodynamics of the unitary Fermi gas which allows a fit free comparison between theory and experiment for this strongly interacting system. In addition, we adress the consequences of scale invariance at infinite scattering length and the subtle violation of scale invariance in two dimensions. Finally we discuss the Fermionic excitation spectrum accessible in momentum resolved RF-spectroscopy and the origin of universal lower bounds for the shear viscosity and the spin diffusion constant.
We analytically determine the properties of two interacting particles in a harmonic trap subject to a rotation or a uniform synthetic magnetic field, where the spherical symmetry of the relative Hamiltonian is preserved. Thermodynamic quantities such as the entropy and energy are calculated via the second order quantum cluster expansion. We find that in the strongly interacting regime the energy is universal, however the entropy changes as a function of the rotation or synthetic magnetic field strength.
Advances in light shaping for optical trapping of neutral particles have led to the development of box traps for ultracold atoms and molecules. These traps have allowed the creation of homogeneous quantum gases and opened new possibilities for studies of many-body physics. They simplify the interpretation of experimental results, provide more direct connections with theory, and in some cases allow qualitatively new, hitherto impossible experiments. Here we review progress in this emerging field.
We prepare and study strongly interacting two-dimensional Bose gases in the superfluid, the classical Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition, and the vacuum-to-superfluid quantum critical regimes. A wide range of the two-body interaction strength 0.05 < g < 3 is covered by tuning the scattering length and by loading the sample into an optical lattice. Based on the equations of state measurements, we extract the coupling constants as well as critical thermodynamic quantities in different regimes. In the superfluid and the BKT transition regimes, the extracted coupling constants show significant down-shifts from the mean-field and perturbation calculations when g approaches or exceeds one. In the BKT and the quantum critical regimes, all measured thermodynamic quantities show logarithmic dependence on the interaction strength, a tendency confirmed by the extended classical-field and renormalization calculations.