No Arabic abstract
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms is prepared in one of two degenerate energy minima in the second Bloch band of an optical square lattice. A subsequent oscillation of the BEC between the two energy minima is observed, which is driven by two distinct collision processes: the conventional Hubbard-type on-site collision and a collision process that changes the orbital flavor. The oscillation frequency scales with the relative strength of these collisional interactions, which can be readily tuned via an experimentally well controlled distortion of the unit cell. The observations are compared to a quantum model of two single-particle modes and to a semi-classical multi-band tight-binding simulation of 12x12 tubular sites of the lattice. Both models reproduce the observed oscillatory quantum many-body dynamics and show the correct dependence of the oscillation frequency on the ratio between the strengths of the on-site and flavor-changing collision processes.
We present a unifying theoretical framework that describes recently observed many-body effects during the interrogation of an optical lattice clock operated with thousands of fermionic alkaline earth atoms. The framework is based on a many-body master equation that accounts for the interplay between elastic and inelastic p-wave and s-wave interactions, finite temperature effects and excitation inhomogeneity during the quantum dynamics of the interrogated atoms. Solutions of the master equation in different parameter regimes are presented and compared. It is shown that a general solution can be obtained by using the so called Truncated Wigner Approximation which is applied in our case in the context of an open quantum system. We use the developed framework to model the density shift and decay of the fringes observed during Ramsey spectroscopy in the JILA 87Sr and NIST 171Yb optical lattice clocks. The developed framework opens a suitable path for dealing with a variety of strongly-correlated and driven open-quantum spin systems.
The recent experimental realization of a three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice clock not only reduces the influence of collisional interactions on the clocks accuracy but also provides a promising platform for studying dipolar many-body quantum physics. Here, by solving the governing master equation, we investigate the role of both elastic and dissipative long-range interactions in the clocks dynamics and study its dependence on lattice spacing, dimensionality, and dipolar orientation. For small lattice spacing, i.e., $k_0all 1$, where $a$ is the lattice constant and $k_0$ is the transition wavenumber, a sizable spin squeezing appears in the transient state which is favored in a head-to-tail dipolar configuration in 1D systems and a side-by-side configuration in 2D systems, respectively. For large lattice spacing, i.e., $k_0agg 1$, the single atomic decay rate can be effectively suppressed due to the destructive dissipative emission of neighboring atoms in both 1D and 2D. Our results will not only aid in the design of the future generation of ultraprecise atomic clocks but also illuminates the rich many-body physics exhibited by radiating dipolar system.
Geometric frustration of particle motion in a kagome lattice causes the single-particle band structure to have a flat s-orbital band. We probe this band structure by exciting a Bose-Einstein condensate into excited Bloch states of an optical kagome lattice, and then measuring the group velocity through the atomic momentum distribution. We find that interactions renormalize the band structure of the kagome lattice, greatly increasing the dispersion of the third band that, according to non-interacting band theory, should be nearly non-dispersing. Measurements at various lattice depths and gas densities agree quantitatively with predictions of the lattice Gross-Pitaevskii equation, indicating that the observed distortion of band structure is caused by the disortion of the overall lattice potential away from the kagome geometry by interactions.
Already a few bosons with contact interparticle interactions in small optical lattices feature a variety of quantum phases: superfluid, Mott-insulator and fermionized Tonks gases can be probed in such systems. To detect these phases -- pivotal for both experiment and theory -- as well as their many-body properties we analyze several distinct measures for the one-body and many-body Shannon information entropies. We exemplify the connection of these entropies with spatial correlations in the many-body state by contrasting them to the Glauber normalized correlation functions. To obtain the ground-state for lattices with commensurate filling (i.e. an integer number of particles per site) for the full range of repulsive interparticle interactions we utilize the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) in order to solve the many-boson Schrodinger equation. We demonstrate that all emergent phases -- the superfluid, the Mott insulator, and the fermionized gas can be characterized equivalently by our many-body entropy measures and by Glaubers normalized correlation functions. In contrast to our many-body entropy measures, single-particle entropy cannot capture these transitions.
We investigate the many-body dissipative dynamics of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice in the presence of incoherent light scattering. Deriving and solving a master equation to describe this process microscopically for many particles, we observe contrasting behaviour in terms of the robustness against this type of heating for different many-body states. In particular, we find that the magnetic correlations exhibited by a two-component gas in the Mott insulating phase should be particularly robust against decoherence from light scattering, because the decoherence in the lowest band is suppressed by a larger factor than the timescales for effective superexchange interactions that drive coherent dynamics. Furthermore, the derived formalism naturally generalizes to analogous states with SU(N) symmetry. In contrast, for typical atomic and laser parameters, two-particle correlation functions describing bound dimers for strong attractive interactions exhibit superradiant effects due to the indistinguishability of off-resonant photons scattered by atoms in different internal states. This leads to rapid decay of correlations describing off-diagonal long-range order for these states. Our predictions should be directly measurable in ongoing experiments, providing a basis for characterising and controlling heating processes in quantum simulation with fermions.