In recent years, ultracold atoms have emerged as an exceptionally controllable experimental system to investigate fundamental physics, ranging from quantum information science to simulations of condensed matter models. Here we go one step further and
explore how cold atoms can be combined with other quantum systems to create new quantum hybrids with tailored properties. Coupling atomic quantum many-body states to an independently controllable single-particle gives access to a wealth of novel physics and to completely new detection and manipulation techniques. We report on recent experiments in which we have for the first time deterministically placed a single ion into an atomic Bose Einstein condensate. A trapped ion, which currently constitutes the most pristine single particle quantum system, can be observed and manipulated at the single particle level. In this single-particle/many-body composite quantum system we show sympathetic cooling of the ion and observe chemical reactions of single particles in situ.
We study cold heteronuclear atom ion collisions by immersing a trapped single ion into an ultracold atomic cloud. Using ultracold atoms as reaction targets, our measurement is sensitive to elastic collisions with extremely small energy transfer. The
observed energy-dependent elastic atom-ion scattering rate deviates significantly from the prediction of Langevin but is in full agreement with the quantum mechanical cross section. Additionally, we characterize inelastic collisions leading to chemical reactions at the single particle level and measure the energy-dependent reaction rate constants. The reaction products are identified by in-trap mass spectrometry, revealing the branching ratio between radiative and non-radiative charge exchange processes.
Improved control of the motional and internal quantum states of ultracold neutral atoms and ions has opened intriguing possibilities for quantum simulation and quantum computation. Many-body effects have been explored with hundreds of thousands of qu
antum-degenerate neutral atoms and coherent light-matter interfaces have been built. Systems of single or a few trapped ions have been used to demonstrate universal quantum computing algorithms and to detect variations of fundamental constants in precision atomic clocks. Until now, atomic quantum gases and single trapped ions have been treated separately in experiments. Here we investigate whether they can be advantageously combined into one hybrid system, by exploring the immersion of a single trapped ion into a Bose-Einstein condensate of neutral atoms. We demonstrate independent control over the two components within the hybrid system, study the fundamental interaction processes and observe sympathetic cooling of the single ion by the condensate. Our experiment calls for further research into the possibility of using this technique for the continuous cooling of quantum computers. We also anticipate that it will lead to explorations of entanglement in hybrid quantum systems and to fundamental studies of the decoherence of a single, locally controlled impurity particle coupled to a quantum environment.
We investigate the propagation of spin impurity atoms through a strongly interacting one-dimensional Bose gas. The initially well localized impurities are accelerated by a constant force, very much analogous to electrons subject to a bias voltage, an
d propagate as a one-dimensional impurity spin wave packet. We follow the motion of the impurities in situ and characterize the interaction induced dynamics. We observe a very complex non-equilibrium dynamics, including the emergence of large density fluctuations in the remaining Bose gas, and multiple scattering events leading to dissipation of the impuritys motion.
