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Register a new userObserving Chiral Superfluid Order by Matter-Wave Interference
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The breaking of time reversal symmetry via the spontaneous formation of chiral order is ubiquitous in nature. Here, we present an unambiguous demonstration of this phenomenon for atoms Bose-Einstein condensed in the second Bloch band of an optical lattice. As a key tool we use a matter wave interference technique, which lets us directly observe the phase properties of the superfluid order parameter and allows us to reconstruct the spatial geometry of certain low energy excitations, associated with the formation of domains of different chirality. Our work marks a new era of optical lattices where orbital degrees of freedom play an essential role for the formation of exotic quantum matter, similarly as in electronic systems.
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The phenomenon of metastability can shape dynamical processes on all temporal and spatial scales. Here, we induce metastable dynamics by pumping ultracold bosonic atoms from the lowest band of an optical lattice to an excitation band, via a sudden quench of the unit cell. The subsequent relaxation process to the lowest band displays a sequence of stages, which include a metastable stage, during which the atom loss from the excitation band is strongly suppressed. Using classical-field simulations and analytical arguments, we provide an explanation for this experimental observation, in which we show that the transient condensed state of the atoms in the excitation band is a dark state with regard to collisional decay and tunneling to a low-energy orbital. Therefore the metastable state is stabilized by destructive interference due to the chiral phase pattern of the condensed state. Our experimental and theoretical study provides a detailed understanding of the different stages of a paradigmatic example of many-body relaxation dynamics.
We study a continuum model of the weakly interacting Bose gas in the presence of an external field with minima forming a triangular lattice. The second lowest band of the single-particle spectrum ($p$-band) has three minima at non-zero momenta. We consider a metastable Bose condensate at these momenta and find that, in the presence of interactions that vary slowly over the lattice spacing, the order parameter space is isomorphic to $S^{5}$. We show that the enlarged symmetry leads to the loss of topologically stable vortices, as well as two extra gapless modes with quadratic dispersion. The former feature implies that this non-Abelian condensate is a failed superfluid that does not undergo a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition. Order-by-disorder splitting appears suppressed, implying that signatures of the $S^5$ manifold ought to be observable at low temperatures.
The study of superconductivity with unconventional order is complicated in condensed matter systems by their extensive complexity. Optical lattices with their exceptional precision and control allow one to emulate superfluidity avoiding many of the complications of condensed matter. A promising approach to realize unconventional superfluid order is to employ orbital degrees of freedom in higher Bloch bands. In recent work, indications were found that bosons condensed in the second band of an optical chequerboard lattice might exhibit p_x pm i p_y order. Here we present experiments, which provide strong evidence for the emergence of p_x pm i p_y order driven by the interaction in the local p-orbitals. We compare our observations with a multi-band Hubbard model and find excellent quantitative agreement.
We study the topological properties of elementary excitations in a staggered $p_x pm i p_y$ Bose-Einstein condensate realized in recent orbital optical lattice experiments. The condensate wave function may be viewed as a configuration space variant of the famous $p_x+ ip_y$ momentum space order parameter of strontium ruthenate superconductors. We show that its elementary excitation spectrum possesses Dirac bosons with $pi$ Berry flux. Remarkably, if we induce a population imbalance between the $p_x+ip_y$ and $p_x-ip_y$ condensate components, a gap opens up in the excitation spectrum resulting in a nonzero Chern invariant and topologically protected edge excitation modes. We give a detailed description on how our proposal can be implemented with standard experimental technology.
We establish that matter-wave interference at near-resonant ultraviolet optical gratings can be used to spatially separate individual conformers of complex molecules. Our calculations show that the conformational purity of the prepared beam can be close to 100% and that all molecules remain in their electronic ground state. The proposed technique is independent of the dipole moment and the spin of the molecule and thus paves the way for structure-sensitive experiments with hydrocarbons and biomolecules, such as neurotransmitters and hormones, which evaded conformer-pure isolation so far
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