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Register a new userDoublon dynamics and polar molecule production in an optical lattice
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Ultracold polar molecules provide an excellent platform to study quantum many-body spin dynamics, which has become accessible in the recently realized low entropy quantum gas of polar molecules in an optical lattice. To obtain a detailed understanding for the molecular formation process in the lattice, we prepare a density distribution where lattice sites are either empty or occupied by a doublon composed of a bosonic atom interacting with a fermionic atom. By letting this disordered, out-of-equilibrium system evolve from a well-defined initial condition, we observe clear effects on pairing that arise from inter-species interactions, a higher partial wave Feshbach resonance, and excited Bloch-band population. When only the lighter fermions are allowed to tunnel in the three-dimensional (3D) lattice, the system dynamics can be well described by theory. However, in a regime where both fermions and bosons can tunnel, we encounter correlated dynamics that is beyond the current capability of numerical simulations. Furthermore, we show that we can probe the microscopic distribution of the atomic gases in the lattice by measuring the inelastic loss of doublons. These techniques realize tools that are generically applicable to heteronuclear diatomic systems in optical lattices and can shed light on molecule production as well as dynamics of a Bose-Fermi mixture.
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Quantised sound waves -- phonons -- govern the elastic response of crystalline materials, and also play an integral part in determining their thermodynamic properties and electrical response (e.g., by binding electrons into superconducting Cooper pairs). The physics of lattice phonons and elasticity is absent in simulators of quantum solids constructed of neutral atoms in periodic light potentials: unlike real solids, traditional optical lattices are silent because they are infinitely stiff. Optical-lattice realisations of crystals therefore lack some of the central dynamical degrees of freedom that determine the low-temperature properties of real materials. Here, we create an optical lattice with phonon modes using a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) coupled to a confocal optical resonator. Playing the role of an active quantum gas microscope, the multimode cavity QED system both images the phonons and induces the crystallisation that supports phonons via short-range, photon-mediated atom-atom interactions. Dynamical susceptibility measurements reveal the phonon dispersion relation, showing that these collective excitations exhibit a sound speed dependent on the BEC-photon coupling strength. Our results pave the way for exploring the rich physics of elasticity in quantum solids, ranging from quantum melting transitions to exotic fractonic topological defects in the quantum regime.
The production of molecules from dual species atomic quantum gases has enabled experiments that employ molecules at nanoKelvin temperatures. As a result, every degree of freedom of these molecules is in a well-defined quantum state and exquisitely controlled. These ultracold molecules open a new world of precision quantum chemistry in which quantum statistics, quantum partial waves, and even many-body correlations can play important roles. Moreover, to investigate the strongly correlated physics of many interacting molecular dipoles, we can mitigate lossy chemical reactions by controlling the dimensionality of the system using optical lattices formed by interfering laser fields. In a full three-dimensional optical lattice, chemistry can be turned on or off by tuning the lattice depth, which allows us to configure an array of long-range interacting quantum systems with rich internal structure. Such a system represents an excellent platform for gaining fundamental insights to complex materials based on quantum simulations and also for quantum information processing in the future.
We demonstrate fluorescence microscopy of individual fermionic potassium atoms in a 527-nm-period optical lattice. Using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) cooling on the 770.1-nm D$_1$ transition of $^{40}$K, we find that atoms remain at individual sites of a 0.3-mK-deep lattice, with a $1/e$ pinning lifetime of $67(9),rm{s}$, while scattering $sim 10^3$ photons per second. The plane to be imaged is isolated using microwave spectroscopy in a magnetic field gradient, and can be chosen at any depth within the three-dimensional lattice. With a similar protocol, we also demonstrate patterned selection within a single lattice plane. High resolution images are acquired using a microscope objective with 0.8 numerical aperture, from which we determine the occupation of lattice sites in the imaging plane with 94(2)% fidelity per atom. Imaging with single-atom sensitivity and addressing with single-site accuracy are key steps towards the search for unconventional superfluidity of fermions in optical lattices, the initialization and characterization of transport and non-equilibrium dynamics, and the observation of magnetic domains.
Engineered spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in cold atom systems can aid in the study of novel synthetic materials and complex condensed matter phenomena. Despite great advances, alkali atom SOC systems are hindered by heating from spontaneous emission, which limits the observation of many-body effects, motivating research into potential alternatives. Here we demonstrate that SOC can be engineered to occur naturally in a one-dimensional fermionic 87Sr optical lattice clock (OLC). In contrast to previous SOC experiments, in this work the SOC is both generated and probed using a direct ultra-narrow optical clock transition between two electronic orbital states. We use clock spectroscopy to prepare lattice band populations, internal electronic states, and quasimomenta, as well as to produce SOC dynamics. The exceptionally long lifetime of the excited clock state (160 s) eliminates decoherence and atom loss from spontaneous emission at all relevant experimental timescales, allowing subsequent momentum- and spin-resolved in situ probing of the SOC band structure and eigenstates. We utilize these capabilities to study Bloch oscillations, spin-momentum locking, and Van Hove singularities in the transition density of states. Our results lay the groundwork for the use of OLCs to probe novel SOC phases of matter.
Ultracold polar molecules, with their long-range electric dipolar interactions, offer a unique platform for studying correlated quantum many-body phenomena such as quantum magnetism. However, realizing a highly degenerate quantum gas of molecules with a low entropy per particle has been an outstanding experimental challenge. In this paper, we report the synthesis of a low entropy molecular quantum gas by creating molecules at individual sites of a three-dimensional optical lattice that is initially loaded from a low entropy mixture of K and Rb quantum gases. We make use of the quantum statistics and interactions of the initial atom gases to load into the optical lattice, simultaneously and with good spatial overlap, a Mott insulator of bosonic Rb atoms and a single-band insulator of fermionic K atoms. Then, using magneto-association and optical state transfer, we efficiently produce ground-state molecules in the lattice at those sites that contained one Rb and one K atom. The achieved filling fraction of 25% indicates an entropy as low as $2.2,k_B$ per molecule. This low-entropy molecular quantum gas opens the door to novel studies of transport and entanglement propagation in a many-body system with long-range dipolar interactions.
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