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Register a new userAnisotropic long-range interaction investigated with cold atoms
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In two dimensions, a system of self-gravitating particles collapses and forms a singularity in finite time below a critical temperature $T_c$. We investigate experimentally a quasi two-dimensional cloud of cold neutral atoms in interaction with two pairs of perpendicular counter-propagating quasi-resonant laser beams, in order to look for a signature of this ideal phase transition: indeed, the radiation pressure forces exerted by the laser beams can be viewed as an anisotropic, and non-potential, generalization of two-dimensional self-gravity. We first show that our experiment operates in a parameter range which should be suitable to observe the collapse transition. However, the experiment unveils only a moderate compression instead of a phase transition between the two phases. A three-dimensional numerical simulation shows that both the finite small thickness of the cloud, which induces a competition between the effective gravity force and the repulsive force due to multiple scattering, and the atomic losses due to heating in the third dimension, contribute to smearing the transition.
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A quasi-resonant laser induces a long-range attractive force within a cloud of cold atoms. We take advantage of this force to build in the laboratory a system of particles with a one-dimensional gravitational-like interaction, at a fluid level of modeling. We give experimental evidences of such an interaction in a cold Strontium gas, studying the density profile of the cloud, its size as a function of the number of atoms, and its breathing oscillations.
We measure the temperature of ultra-cold Rb-87 gases transferred into an optical lattice and compare to non-interacting thermodynamics for a combined lattice--parabolic potential. Absolute temperature is determined at low temperature by fitting quasimomentum distributions obtained using bandmapping, i.e., turning off the lattice potential slowly compared with the bandgap. We show that distributions obtained at high temperature employing this technique are not quasimomentum distributions through numerical simulations. To overcome this limitation, we extract temperature using the in-trap size of the gas.
Alkaline-earth-metal atoms exhibit long-range dipolar interactions, which are generated via the coherent exchange of photons on the 3P_0-3D_1-transition of the triplet manifold. In case of bosonic strontium, which we discuss here, this transition has a wavelength of 2.7 mu m and a dipole moment of 2.46 Debye, and there exists a magic wavelength permitting the creation of optical lattices that are identical for the states 3P_0 and 3D_1. This interaction enables the realization and study of mixtures of hard-core lattice bosons featuring long-range hopping, with tuneable disorder and anisotropy. We derive the many-body Master equation, investigate the dynamics of excitation transport and analyze spectroscopic signatures stemming from coherent long-range interactions and collective dissipation. Our results show that lattice gases of alkaline-earth-metal atoms permit the creation of long-lived collective atomic states and constitute a simple and versatile platform for the exploration of many-body systems with long-range interactions. As such, they represent an alternative to current related efforts employing Rydberg gases, atoms with large magnetic moment, or polar molecules.
We report our experimental measurements and theoretical analysis of the position response function of a cloud of cold atoms residing in the viscous medium of an optical molasses and confined by a magneto-optical trap (MOT). We measure the position response function by applying a transient homogeneous magnetic field as a perturbing force. We observe a transition from a damped oscillatory motion to an over-damped relaxation, stemming from a competition between the viscous drag provided by the optical molasses and the restoring force of the MOT. Our observations are in both qualitative and quantitative agreement with the predictions of a theoretical model based on the Langevin equation. As a consistency check, and as a prototype for future experiments, we also study the free diffusive spreading of the atomic cloud in our optical molasses with the confining magnetic field of the MOT turned off. We find that the measured value of the diffusion coefficient agrees with the value predicted by our Langevin model, using the damping coefficient. The damping coefficient was deduced from our measurements of the position response function at the same temperature.
Atoms can scatter light and they can also amplify it by stimulated emission. From this simple starting point, we examine the possibility of realizing a random laser in a cloud of laser-cooled atoms. The answer is not obvious as both processes (elastic scattering and stimulated emission) seem to exclude one another: pumping atoms to make them behave as amplifier reduces drastically their scattering cross-section. However, we show that even the simplest atom model allows the efficient combination of gain and scattering. Moreover, supplementary degrees of freedom that atoms offer allow the use of several gain mechanisms, depending on the pumping scheme. We thus first study these different gain mechanisms and show experimentally that they can induce (standard) lasing. We then present how the constraint of combining scattering and gain can be quantified, which leads to an evaluation of the random laser threshold. The results are promising and we draw some prospects for a practical realization of a random laser with cold atoms.
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