We propose a method for measuring the temperature of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice potential from the intensity of the scattered light in the far-field diffraction pattern. We consider a single-component gas in a tightly-confined two-dimensional lattice, illuminated by far off-resonant light driving a cycling transition. Our calculations show that thermal correlations of the fermionic atoms generate fluctuations in the intensity of the diffraction pattern of light scattered from the atomic lattice array and that this signal can be accurately detected above the shot noise using a lens to collect photons scattered in a forward direction (with the diffraction maxima blocked). The sensitivity of the thermometer is enhanced by an additional harmonic trapping potential.
We propose a method to directly measure the temperature of a gas of weakly interacting fermionic atoms loaded into an optical lattice. This technique relies on Raman spectroscopy and is applicable to experimentally relevant temperature regimes. Additionally, we show that a similar spectroscopy scheme can be used to obtain information on the quasiparticle properties and Hubbard bands of the metallic and Mott-insulating states of interacting fermionic spin mixtures. These two methods provide experimentalists with novel probes to accurately characterize fermionic quantum gases confined to optical…
We study ensembles of fermionic cold-atom quantum wires with tunable transverse mode population and single-wire resolution. From in situ density profiles, we determine the temperature of the atomic wires in the weakly interacting limit and reconstruct the underlying potential landscape. By varying atom number and temperature, we control the occupation of the transverse modes and study the 1D-3D crossover. In the 1D limit, we observe an increase of the reduced temperature $T/T_{F}$ at nearly constant entropy per particle $S/N k_{B}$. The ability to probe individual atomic wires in situ paves th…
Cooling atomic gases into strongly correlated quantum phases requires estimates of the entropy to perform thermometry and establish viability. We construct an ansatz partition function for models of Laughlin states of atomic gases by combining high temperature series expansions with exact diagonalization. Using the ansatz we find that entropies required to observe Laughlin correlations with bosonic gases are within reach of current cooling capabilities.
Potential realization of a quantum thermometer operating in the nanokelvin regime, formed by a few-fermionic mixture confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap, is proposed. Thermal states of the system are studied theoretically from the point of view of fundamental sensitivity to temperature changes. It is pointed out that the ability to control the interaction strength in such systems allows obtaining high-temperature sensitivity in the regime where the temperature is much lower than the characteristic temperature scale determined by a harmonic confinement. This sensitivity is very close to…
Estimating the temperature of a cold quantum system is difficult. Usually, one measures a well-understood thermal state and uses that prior knowledge to infer its temperature. In contrast, we introduce a method of thermometry that assumes minimal knowledge of the state of a system and is potentially non-destructive. Our method uses a universal temperature-dependence of the quench dynamics of an initially thermal system coupled to a qubit probe that follows from the Tasaki-Crooks theorem for non-equilibrium work distributions. We provide examples for a cold-atom system, in which our thermometry…
We demonstrate spin gradient thermometry, a new general method of measuring the temperature of ultracold atoms in optical lattices. We realize a mixture of spins separated by a magnetic field gradient. Measurement of the width of the transition layer between the two spin domains serves as a new method of thermometry which is observed to work over a broad range of lattice depths and temperatures, including in the Mott insulator regime. We demonstrate the thermometry in a system of ultracold rubidium atoms, and suggest that interesting spin physics can be realized in this system. The lowest meas…
Precise temperature measurements on systems of few ultracold atoms is of paramount importance in quantum technologies, but can be very resource-intensive. Here, we put forward an adaptive Bayesian framework that substantially boosts the performance of cold atom temperature estimation. Specifically, we process data from real and simulated release--recapture thermometry experiments on few potassium atoms cooled down to the microkelvin range in an optical tweezer. From simulations, we demonstrate that adaptively choosing the release--recapture times to maximise information gain does substantially…
Artificial gauge fields are a unique way of manipulating the motional state of cold atoms. Here we propose the use of artificial gauge fields -- obtained e.g. via lattice shaking -- to perform primary noise thermometry of cold atoms in optical lattices - not requiring any form of prior calibration. The proposed thermometric scheme relies on fundamental fluctuation-dissipation relations, connecting the global response to the variation of the applied gauge field and the fluctuation of quantities related to the momentum distribution (such as the average kinetic energy or the average current). We …
Interesting spin Hamiltonians can be realized with ultracold atoms in a two-component Mott insulator (2CMI). It was recently demonstrated that the application of a magnetic field gradient to the 2CMI enables new techniques of thermometry and adiabatic cooling. Here we present a theoretical description which provides quantitative analysis of these two new techniques. We show that adiabatic reduction of the field gradient is capable of cooling below the Curie or Néel temperature of certain spin ordered phases.
For atoms or molecules in optical lattices, conventional thermometry methods are often unsuitable due to low particle numbers or a lack of cycling transitions. However, a differential spectroscopic light shift can map temperature onto the line shape with a low sensitivity to trap anharmonicity. We study narrow molecular transitions to demonstrate precise frequency-based lattice thermometry, as well as carrier cooling. This approach should be applicable down to nanokelvin temperatures. We also discuss how the thermal light shift can affect the accuracy of optical lattice clocks.
We report on the single atom and single site-resolved detection of the total density in a cold atom realization of the 2D Fermi-Hubbard model. Fluorescence imaging of doublons is achieved by splitting each lattice site into a double well, thereby separating atom pairs. Full density readout yields a direct measurement of the equation of state, including direct thermometry via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Site-resolved density correlations reveal the Pauli hole at low filling, and strong doublon-hole correlations near half filling. These are shown to account for the difference between lo…
We measure the temperature of a deeply degenerate Fermi gas, by using a weakly interacting sample of heavier bosonic atoms as a probe. This thermometry method relies on the thermalization between the two species and on the determination of the condensate fraction of the bosons. In our experimental implementation, a small sample of 41K atoms serves as the thermometer for a 6Li Fermi sea. We investigate the evaporative cooling of a 6Li spin mixture in a single-beam optical dipole trap and observe how the condensate fraction of the thermometry atoms depends on the final trap depth. From the conde…
Quantum simulation is a highly ambitious program in cold atom research currently being pursued in laboratories worldwide. The goal is to use cold atoms in optical lattice to simulate models for unsolved strongly correlated systems, so as to deduce their properties directly from experimental data. An important step in this effort is to determine the temperature of the system, which is essential for deducing all thermodynamic functions. This step, however, remains difficult for lattice systems at the moment. Here, we propose a method based on a generalized fluctuation-dissipation theorem. It doe…
We theoretically consider non-interacting fermions confined to optical lattices and apply a lattice amplitude modulation that we choose to be either homogeneous or of superlattice geometry. We study the atom excitation rate to higher Bloch bands which can be measured by adiabatic band mapping. We find that the atom excitation rate shows a clear signature of the temperature dependent Fermi distribution in the lowest band of the equilibrium lattice as excitations are quasimomentum-resolved. Based on typical experimental parameters and incorporating a trapping potential, we find that thermometry …
We propose a method for measuring the temperature of strongly correlated phases of ultracold atom gases confined in spin-dependent optical lattices. In this technique, a small number of "impurity" atoms--trapped in a state that does not experience the lattice potential--are in thermal contact with atoms bound to the lattice. The impurity serves as a thermometer for the system because its temperature can be straightforwardly measured using time-of-flight expansion velocity. This technique may be useful for resolving many open questions regarding thermalization in these isolated systems. We disc…
For over twenty years, ultra-cold atomic systems have formed an almost perfect arena for simulating different quantum many-body phenomena and exposing their non-obvious and very often counterintuitive features. Thanks to extremely precise controllability of different parameters they are able to capture different quantum properties which were previously recognized only as theoretical curiosities. Here, we go over the current experimental progress in exploring the curious one-dimensional quantum world of fermions from the perspective of three subjectively selected trends being currently under vi…
We investigate long-range pairing interactions between ultracold fermionic atoms confined in an optical lattice which are mediated by the coupling to a cavity. In the absence of other perturbations, we find three degenerate pairing symmetries for a two-dimensional square lattice. By tuning a weak local atomic interaction via a Feshbach resonance or by tuning a weak magnetic field, the superfluid system can be driven from a topologically trivial s-wave to topologically ordered, chiral superfluids containing Majorana edge states. Our work points out a novel path towards the creation of exotic su…
Quantum simulation with ultracold atoms has become a powerful technique to gain insight into interacting many-body systems. In particular, the possibility to study nonequilibrium dynamics offers a unique pathway to understand correlations and excitations in strongly interacting quantum matter. So far, coherent nonequilibrium dynamics has exclusively been observed in ultracold many-body systems of bosonic atoms. Here we report on the observation of coherent quench dynamics of fermionic atoms. A metallic state of ultracold spin-polarised fermions is prepared along with a Bose-Einstein condensate…
We consider spin-half fermionic atoms with isotropic Rashba spin-orbit coupling in three directions. The interatomic potential is modeled by a square well potential. We derive the analytic form of the asymptotic wave-functions at short range of two fermions in the subspace of zero net momentum and zero total angular momentum. We show that the spin-orbit coupling has perturbative effects on the short range asymptotic behavior of the wave-functions away from resonances. We argue that our conclusion should hold generally.
The momentum distribution is one of the most important quantities which provides information about interactions in many-body systems. At the same time it is a quantity that can easily be accessed in experiments on ultracold atoms. In this paper, we consider mixtures of light and heavy fermionic atoms in an optical lattice described effectively by the Falicov-Kimball model. Using a Monte Carlo method, we study how different ordered density-wave phases can be detected by measurement of the momentum distribution of the light atoms. We also demonstrate that ordered phases can be seen in Bragg scat…
High-fidelity collisional quantum gates with fermionic atoms
Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik（马克斯·普朗克量子光学研究所）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）；Department of Physics and SUPA, University of Strathclyde（斯特拉斯克莱德大学物理系和SUPA）；Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d’Optique Graduate School, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay（夏尔·法布里实验室，高等光学学院，法国国家科学研究中心，巴黎萨克雷大学）
We propose to use fermionic atoms with degenerate ground and excited internal levels ($F_g\rightarrow F_e$), loaded into the motional ground state of an optical lattice with two atoms per lattice site, to realize dark states with no radiative decay. The physical mechanism behind the dark states is an interplay of Pauli blocking and multilevel dipolar interactions. The dark states are independent of lattice geometry, can support an extensive number of excitations and can be coherently prepared using a Raman scheme taking advantage of the quantum Zeno effect. These attributes make them appealing…
We show that, near a Feshbach resonance, a strong p-wave resonance is present at low energy in atom-dimer scattering for $^6$Li-$^{40}$K fermionic mixtures. This resonance is due to a virtual bound state, in the atom-dimer system, which is present at this low energy. When the mass ratio between the two fermionic elements is increased, this virtual bound state goes to a known real bound state which appears when the mass ratio reaches 8.17. This resonance should affect a number of physical properties. These include the equation of state of unbalanced mixtures at very low temperature but also the…
An array of ultracold neutral atoms held in optical micro-traps is a promising platform for quantum computation. One of the major bottlenecks of this platform is the weak coupling strength between adjacent atoms, which limits the speed of two-qubit gates. Here, we present a method to perform a fast universal square-root-SWAP gate with fermionic atoms. The basic idea of the gate is to release the atoms into a harmonic potential positioned in between the two atoms. By properly tailoring the interaction parameter, the collision process between the atoms generates entanglement and yields the desir…
We investigate the superfluid state of repulsively interacting three-component (color) fermionic atoms in optical lattices. When the anisotropy of the three repulsive interactions is strong, atoms of two of the three colors form Cooper pairs and atoms of the third color remain a Fermi liquid. An effective attractive interaction is induced by density fluctuations of the third-color atoms. This superfluid state is stable against changes in filling close to half filling. We determine the phase diagrams in terms of temperature, filling, and the anisotropy of the repulsive interactions.
We propose a simple method to detect the antiferromagnetic (AF) state of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice by combining a time-of-flight (TOF) imaging method and a Feshbach resonance. In this scheme, the nontrivial dynamics of fermionic atoms during the imaging process works as a probe with respect to the breaking of the translational symmetry in the AF state. Precise numerical simulations demonstrate that the characteristic oscillatory dynamics induced by the scattering process that transfers an AF ordering vector appears in TOF images, which can be easily observed experimentally.
Advances with trapped ultracold atoms intensified interest in simulating complex physical phenomena, including quantum magnetism and transitions from itinerant to non-itinerant behavior. Here we show formation of antiferromagnetic ground states of few ultracold fermionic atoms in single and double well (DW) traps, through microscopic Hamiltonian exact diagonalization for two DW arrangements: (i) two linearly oriented one-dimensional, 1D, wells, and (ii) two coupled parallel wells, forming a trap of two-dimensional, 2D, nature. The spectra and spin-resolved conditional probabilities reveal for …
We present the design, implementation and characterization of a dual-species magneto-optical trap (MOT) for fermionic 6Li and 40K atoms with large atom numbers. The MOT simultaneously contains 5.2x10^9 6Li-atoms and 8.0x10^9 40K-atoms, which are continuously loaded by a Zeeman slower for 6Li and a 2D-MOT for 40K. The atom sources induce capture rates of 1.2x10^9 6Li-atoms/s and 1.4x10^9 40K-atoms/s. Trap losses due to light-induced interspecies collisions of ~65% were observed and could be minimized to ~10% by using low magnetic field gradients and low light powers in the repumping light of bo…
We investigate the Mott transitions of three-component (colors) repulsive fermionic atoms in optical lattices using the dynamical mean field theory. We find that for SU(3) symmetry breaking interactions the Mott transition occurs at incommensurate half filling. As a result, a characteristic Mott insulating state appears, where paired atoms with two different colors and atoms with the third color are localized at different sites. We also find another Mott state where atoms with two different colors are localized at different sites and atoms with the third color remain itinerant. We demonstrate …
We investigate three-component (colors) repulsive fermionic atoms in optical lattices using the dynamical mean field theory. Depending on the anisotropy of the repulsive interactions, either a color density-wave state or a color selective staggered state appears at half filling. In the former state, pairs of atoms with two of the three colors and atoms with the third color occupy different sites alternately. In the latter state, atoms with two of the three colors occupy different sites alternately and atoms with the third color are itinerant throughout the system. When the interactions are iso…
We present a simple scheme for implementing a one-dimensional (1D) magnetic-flux lattice of ultracold fermionic spin-$1/2$ atoms. The resulting tight-binding model supports gapped and gapless topological phases, and chiral currents for Meissner and vortex phases. Its single-particle spectra exhibit topological flat bands at small flux, and the flatness sensitively depends on hopping strength. An effective $p$-wave interaction arises in a $s$-wave paired superfluid. Treating atomic internal states as forming a synthetic dimension and balancing the interplay of magnetic flux and Zeeman field, ou…
We have produced persistent currents of ultracold fermionic atoms trapped in a ring, with lifetimes greater than 10 seconds in the strongly-interacting regime. These currents remain stable well into the BCS regime at sufficiently low temperature. We drive a circulating BCS superfluid into the normal phase and back by changing the interaction strength and find that the probability for quantized superflow to reappear is remarkably insensitive to the time spent in the normal phase and the minimum interaction strength. After ruling out spontaneous current formation for our experimental conditions,…
We propose a scheme for generating Rashba spin-orbit coupling and perpendicular Zeeman field simultaneously for cold fermionic atoms in a harmonic trap through the coupling between atoms and laser fields. The realization of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and perpendicular Zeeman field provides opportunities for exploring many topological phenomena using cold fermionic atoms. We focus on the intrinsic anomalous Hall effect and show that it may be observed through the response of atomic density to a rotation of the harmonic trap.
We develop a diagrammatic approach for solving few-body problems in heteronuclear fermionic mixtures near a narrow interspecies Feshbach resonance. We calculate s-, p-, and d-wave phaseshifts for the scattering of an atom by a weakly-bound dimer. The fermionic statistics of atoms and the composite nature of the dimer lead to a strong angular momentum dependence of the atom-dimer interaction, which manifests itself in a peculiar interference of the scattered s- and p-waves. This effect strengthens with the mass ratio and is remarkably pronounced in 40K-(40K-6Li) atom-dimer collisions. We calcul…
We analyze a ultracold fermionic atom system in a three dimensional optical lattice with a confinement harmonic potential, using the Hubbard model, and time-dependent Gutzwiller variational approach for numerical calculation. Our study is focused on the time evolution of the particle transfer when the lattice potential is modulated by adding a periodic one. The choice of the parameters such as the modulation frequency and amplitude and the particle number affects the particle transfer. We calculate the time evolution of the variance in the particle distribution, and show its dependence on the …
We study the finite temperature properties of two-component fermionic atoms trapped in a two-dimensional optical lattice. We apply the self-energy functional approach to the two-dimensional Hubbard model with a harmonic trapping potential, and systematically investigate the thermodynamic properties of this system. We find that entropy and grand potential provide evidence of a crossover between the Mott insulating and metallic phases at certain temperatures. In addition, we find that entropy exhibits a cusp-like anomaly at lower temperatures, suggesting a second or higher order antiferromagneti…
We demonstrate sub-Doppler cooling of 40K on the D_1 atomic transition. Using a gray molasses scheme, we efficiently cool a compressed cloud of 6.5x10^8 atoms from ~ 4\mK to 20uK in 8 ms. After transfer in a quadrupole magnetic trap, we measure a phase space density of ~10^-5. This technique offers a promising route for fast evaporation of fermionic 40K.
Strongly interacting fermions define the properties of complex matter at all densities, from atomic nuclei to modern solid state materials and neutron stars. Ultracold atomic Fermi gases have emerged as a pristine platform for the study of many-fermion systems. Here we realize a quantum gas microscope for fermionic $^{40}$K atoms trapped in an optical lattice, which allows one to probe strongly correlated fermions at the single atom level. We combine 3D Raman sideband cooling with high-resolution optics to simultaneously cool and image individual atoms with single lattice site resolution at a …
Recent clock experiments have measured density-dependent frequency shifts in polarized fermionic alkaline-earth atoms using 1S0-3P0 Rabi spectroscopy. Here we provide a first-principles non-equilibrium theoretical description of the interaction frequency shifts starting from the microscopic many-body Hamiltonian. Our formalism describes the dependence of the frequency shift on excitation inhomogeneity, interactions, and many-body dynamics, provides a fundamental understanding of the effects of the measurement process, and explains the observed density shift data. We also propose a method to me…
We show that in s-wave superfluids of cold fermionic atoms with laser-field-generated effective spin-orbit interactions, a topological phase with gapless edge states and Majorana fermion quasiparticles obeying the non-Abelian statistics is realized in the case with a large Zeeman magnetic field. Our scenario provides a promising approach for quantum computation manipulating non-Abelian anyons via an s-wave Feshbach resonance.
The phase diagram of one-dimensional earth-alkaline fermionic atoms and ytterbium 171 atoms is investigated by means of a low-energy approach and density-matrix renormalization group calculations. For incommensurate filling, four gapless phases with a spin gap are found and consist of two superconducting instabilities and two coexisting bond and charge density-waves instabilities. In the half-filled case, seven Mott-insulating phases arise with the emergence of four non-degenerate phases with exotic hidden orderings.
We investigate the effects of a repulsive three-body interaction on the Mott transition of the repulsively interacting three-component fermionic atoms in optical lattices by means of the self-energy functional approach. We find that the three-body repulsion hardly affects the qualitative features of the Mott transition, because the three-body repulsion does not compete with the two-body repulsions. When the three-body repulsion is extremely strong, the triple occupancy vanishes in the Fermi liquid state. This situation is equivalent to that caused by strong three-body losses. Our results imply…
A simple set of algebraic equations is derived for the exact low-temperature thermodynamics of one-dimensional multi-component strongly attractive fermionic atoms with enlarged SU(N) spin symmetry and Zeeman splitting. Universal multi-component Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) phases are thus determined. For linear Zeeman splitting, the physics of the gapless phase at low temperatures belongs to the universality class of a two-component asymmetric TLL corresponding to spin-neutral N-atom composites and spin-(N-1)/2 single atoms. The equation of states is also obtained to open up the study of mu…
We investigate the finite-temperature properties of attractive three-component (colors) fermionic atoms in optical lattices using a self-energy functional approach. As the strength of the attractive interaction increases in the low-temperature region, we observe a second-order transition from a Fermi liquid to a color superfluid (CSF), where atoms from two of the three colors form Cooper pairs. In the strong attractive region, we observe a first-order transition from a CSF to a trionic state, where three atoms with different colors form singlet bound states. A crossover between a Fermi liquid …
We study numerically the problem of dynamical thermalization of interacting cold fermionic atoms placed in an isolated Sinai-oscillator trap. This system is characterized by a quantum chaos regime for one-particle dynamics. We show that for a many-body system of cold atoms the interactions, with a strength above a certain quantum chaos border given by the Aberg criterion, lead to the Fermi-Dirac distribution and relaxation of many-body initial states to the thermalized state in absence of any contact with a thermostate. We discuss the properties of this dynamical thermalization and its links w…
Considering a system of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, we propose a simple and robust implementation of a quantum simulator for the homogeneous t-J model with a well-controlled fraction of holes x. The proposed experiment can provide valuable insight into the physics of cuprate superconductors. A similar scheme applied to bosons, moreover, allows one to investigate experimentally the subtle role of inhomogeneity when a system passes from one quantum phase to another.
We consider a heteronuclear fermionic mixture on the molecular side of an interspecies Feshbach resonance and discuss atom-dimer scattering properties in uniform space and in the presence of an external confining potential, restricting the system to a quasi-2D geometry. We find that there is a peculiar atom-dimer p-wave resonance which can be tuned by changing the frequency of the confinement. Our results have implications for the ongoing experiments on Lithium-Potassium mixtures, where this mechanism allows for switching the p-wave interaction between a K atom and Li-K dimer from attractive t…
We investigate the finite-temperature properties of attractive three-component (colors) fermionic atoms in optical lattices using a self-energy functional approach. As the strength of the attractive interaction increases in the low temperature region, a second-order transition occurs from a Fermi liquid to a color superfluid (CSF). In the strong attractive region, a first-order transition occurs from a CSF to a trionic state. In the high temperature region, a crossover between a Fermi liquid and a trionic state is observed with increasing the strength of the attractive interaction. The crossov…
We discuss how an $η$-condensate, corresponding to an exact excited eigenstate of the Fermi-Hubbard model, can be produced with cold atoms in an optical lattice. Using time-dependent density matrix renormalisation group methods, we analyse a state preparation scheme beginning from a band insulator state in an optical superlattice. This state can act as an important test case, both for adiabatic preparation methods and the implementation of the many-body Hamiltonian, and measurements on the final state can be used to help detect associated errors.
We study Mott insulators of fermionic alkaline earth atoms, described by Heisenberg spin models with enhanced SU(N) symmetry. In dramatic contrast to SU(2) magnetism, more than two spins are required to form a singlet. On the square lattice, the classical ground state is highly degenerate and magnetic order is thus unlikely. In a large-N limit, we find a chiral spin liquid ground state with topological order and Abelian fractional statistics. We discuss its experimental detection. Chiral spin liquids with non-Abelian anyons may also be realizable with alkaline earth atoms.
