We model a system of ultracold fermionic dipolar molecules on a two-dimensional square lattice. Assuming that the molecules are in their nondegenerate hyperfine ground state, and that the dipole moment is polarized perpendicular to the plane (as in the recent experiments on 40K-87Rb molecules), we approximate these molecules as spinless fermions with long range repulsive dipolar interactions. We use mean field theory to obtain the restricted phase diagram as a function of the filling, the strength of interaction and the temperature. We find a number of ordered density wave phases in the system, as well as phase separation between these phases. A Monte Carlo analysis shows that the higher-period phases are usually suppressed in the exact solution.
We systematically study ground state properties of fermionic dipolar gases in a planar array of one-dimensional potential tubes for an arbitrary orientation of dipole moments. Using the Luttinger liquid theory with the generalized Bogoliubov transformation, we calculate the elementary excitations and the Luttinger scaling exponents for various relevant quantum orders. The complete quantum phase diagrams for arbitrary polar angle of the dipole moment is obtained, including charge density wave, p-wave superfluid, inter-tube gauge-phase density wave, and inter-tube s-wave superfluid, where the la…
We study the Fermi liquid properties of the cold atomic dipolar Fermi gases with the explicit dipolar anisotropy using perturbative approaches. Due to the explicit dipolar anisotropy, Fermi surfaces exhibit distortions of the $d_{r^2-3z^2}$-type in three dimensions and of the $d_{x^2-y^2}$-type in two dimensions. The fermion self-energy, effective mass, and Fermi velocity develop the same anisotropy at the Hartree-Fock level proportional to the interaction strength. The Landau interaction parameters in the isotropic Fermi liquids become the tri-diagonal Landau interaction matrices in the dipol…
Motivated by recent experimental advances in creating polar molecular gases in the laboratory, we theoretically investigate the many body effects of two-dimensional dipolar systems with the anisotropic and $1/r^3$ dipole-dipole interactions. We calculate collective modes of 2D dipolar systems, and also consider spatially separated bilayer and multilayer superlattice dipolar systems. We obtain the characteristic features of collective modes in quantum dipolar gases. We quantitatively compare the modes of these dipolar systems with the modes of the extensively studied usual two-dimensional elect…
We introduce a density functional formalism to study the ground-state properties of strongly-correlated dipolar and ionic ultracold bosonic and fermionic gases, based on the self-consistent combination of the weak and the strong coupling limits. Contrary to conventional density functional approaches, our formalism does not require a previous calculation of the interacting homogeneous gas, and it is thus very suitable to treat systems with tunable long-range interactions. Due to its asymptotic exactness in the regime of strong correlation, the formalism works for systems in which standard mean-…
In this article we develop the framework to describe Bose-Fermi mixtures of magnetic atoms, focusing on the interaction of bosonic self-bound dipolar quantum droplets with a small number of fermions. We find an attractive interaction potential due to the dipolar interaction with several bound states, which can be occupied by one fermion each, resulting in a very weak back-action on the bosons. We conclude, that these impurities might act as unique probes giving access to inherent properties of dipolar quantum droplets.
We observe the suppression of inelastic dipolar scattering in ultracold Fermi gases of the highly magnetic atom dysprosium: the more energy that is released, the less frequently these exothermic reactions take place, and only quantum spin statistics can explain this counterintuitive effect. Inelastic dipolar scattering in non-zero magnetic fields leads to heating or to loss of the trapped population, both detrimental to experiments intended to study quantum many-body physics with strongly dipolar gases. Fermi statistics, however, is predicted to lead to a kinematic suppression of these harmful…
Motivated by recent experiments in fermionic polar gases, we study the non-equilibrium dynamics of two-component dipolar fermions subject to a quasiperiodic potential. We investigate the localization of charge and spin degrees of freedom time evolving with a long-range spin-SU(2) symmetric fermionic Hamiltonian, by calculating experimentally accessible dynamical observables. To study the non-equilibrium dynamics, we start the time evolution with two initial states at half-filling: (i) product state with doublons $|\uparrow \downarrow 0 \uparrow \downarrow 0 \uparrow \downarrow 0 \uparrow \down…
The compressibility, zero sound dispersion, and effective mass of a gas of fermionic dipolar molecules is calculated at finite temperature for one-, two-, and three-dimensional uniform systems, and in a multilayer quasi-two-dimensional system. The compressibility is nonmonotonic in the reduced temperature, $T/T_F$, exhibiting a maximum at finite temperature. This effect might be visible in a quasi-low-dimensional experiment, providing a clear signature of the onset of many-body quantum degeneracy effects. The collective mode dispersion and effective mass show similar nontrivial temperature and…
We present a superfluid theory of a polarized dipolar Fermi gas. For two dipolar molecules each of which consists of two atoms with positive charge and negative charge, we derive an effective dipole-dipole pairing interaction. Using this pairing interaction, we show that the resulting BCS gap equation is not suffered from the well-known ultraviolet divergence, so that one can quantitatively predict superfluid properties of a dipolar Fermi gas. Using this cutoff-free superfluid theory, we examine the symmetry of the superfluid order parameter at T=0. We also discuss the deformation of the Fermi…
We show that a Bose-Einstein condensate of heteronuclear molecules in the regime of small and static electric fields is described by a quantum rotor model for the macroscopic electric dipole moment of the molecular gas cloud. We solve this model exactly and find the symmetric, i.e., rotationally invariant, and dipolar phases expected from the single-molecule problem, but also an axial and planar nematic phase due to many-body effects. Investigation of the wavefunction of the macroscopic dipole moment also reveals squeezing of the probability distribution for the angular momentum of the molecul…
We report on the creation of an ultracold dipolar gas of fermionic $^{23}$Na$^{40}$K molecules in their absolute rovibrational and hyperfine ground state. Starting from weakly bound Feshbach molecules, we demonstrate hyperfine resolved two-photon transfer into the singlet ${\rm X}^1Σ^+ |v{=}0,J{=}0\rangle$ ground state, coherently bridging a binding energy difference of 0.65 eV via stimulated rapid adiabatic passage. The spin-polarized, nearly quantum degenerate molecular gas displays a lifetime longer than 2.5 s, highlighting NaK's stability against two-body chemical reactions. A homogeneous …
In a combined experimental and theoretical effort, we demonstrate a novel type of dipolar system made of ultracold bosonic dipolar molecules with large magnetic dipole moments. Our dipolar molecules are formed in weakly bound Feshbach molecular states from a sample of strongly magnetic bosonic erbium atoms. We show that the ultracold magnetic molecules can carry very large dipole moments and we demonstrate how to create and characterize them, and how to change their orientation. Finally, we confirm that the relaxation rates of molecules in a quasi-two dimensional geometry can be reduced by usi…
Quantum spin liquids are a new class of magnetic ground state in which spins are quantum mechanically entangled over macroscopic scales. Motivated by recent advances in the control of polar molecules, we show that dipolar interactions between S=1/2 moments stabilize spin liquids on the triangular and kagome lattices. In the latter case, the moments spontaneously break time-reversal, forming a chiral spin liquid with robust edge modes and emergent semions. We propose a simple route toward synthesizing a dipolar Heisenberg antiferromagnet from lattice-trapped polar molecules using only a single …
We study the extended Bose--Hubbard model describing an ultracold gas of dipolar molecules in an optical lattice, taking into account all on-site and nearest-neighbor interactions, including occupation-dependent tunneling and pair tunneling terms. Using exact diagonalization and the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz, we show that these terms can destroy insulating phases and lead to novel quantum phases. These considerable changes of the phase diagram have to be taken into account in upcoming experiments with dipolar molecules.
Analytic expressions have been derived for the interaction potential between dipolar bright solitons and the binding energy of a two-soliton molecule. The properties of these localized structures are explored with a focus on their behavior in the weakly bound regime, with a small binding energy. Using the variational approach a coupled system of ordinary differential equations for the parameters of a soliton molecule is obtained for the description of their evolution. Predictions of the model are compared with numerical simulations of the governing nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii equation and good q…
We study the promising idea of using dipolar molecular systems as analog quantum simulators for quantum link models, which are discrete versions of lattice gauge theories. In a quantum link model the link variables have a finite number of degrees of freedom and discrete values. We construct the effective Hamiltonian of a system of dipolar molecules with electric dipole-dipole interactions, where we use the tunable parameters of the system to match it to the target Hamiltonian describing a U(1) quantum link model in 1+1 dimensions.
We discuss complete theory of point-like particles in fully polarized BECs describing difference in behaviour of electrically- and magnetically polarized BECs. Next we present generalization of this theory on finite size particles to include contribution of size of real molecules on dynamical properties of dipolar BECs. As an application of obtained equation we calculate spectrum of linear collective excitations getting generalization of the Bogoliubov's spectrum. We show absence of roton instability due to positivity of polarization contribution in the excitation spectrum. We found that new t…
The dynamics of a two-soliton molecule bouncing on the reflecting atomic mirror under the effect of gravity has been studied by analytical and numerical methods. The analytical description is based on the variational approximation. In numerical simulations, we observe the resonance oscillations of the two-soliton's center-of-mass position and width, induced by modulated atomic mirror. Theoretical predictions are verified by numerical simulations of the nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) and qualitative agreement between them is found. Hamiltonian dynamic system for a dipolar Bose-Einstei…
We study the ground state phases of a rotating two-component, or binary Bose-Einstein condensate, wherein one component possesses a large magnetic dipole moment. A variety of non-trivial phases emerge in this system, including a half-quantum vortex (HQV) chain phase and a HQV molecule phase, where HQVs of opposite charge bind at short distances. We attribute the emergence of these phases to the development of a minimum in the adiabatic HQV interaction potential, which we calculate explicitly. We thus show that the presence of dipolar interactions in this system leads to a rich phase diagram, a…
We report on the creation of bosonic NaCs molecules in their absolute rovibrational ground state via stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. We create ultracold gases with up to 22,000 dipolar NaCs molecules at a temperature of 300(50) nK and a peak density of $1.0(4) \times 10^{12}$ cm$^{-3}$. We demonstrate comprehensive quantum state control by preparing the molecules in a specific electronic, vibrational, rotational, and hyperfine state. Employing the tunability and strength of the permanent electric dipole moment of NaCs, we induce dipole moments of up to 2.6 D. Dipolar systems of NaCs molecu…
Ultracold ground state dipolar 40K-87Rb molecules have recently been produced in a loose harmonic trap by employing a magnetic field sweep across a Feshbach resonance followed by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage [K.-K. Ni et al., Science 322, 231 (2008)]. The overall experimental efficiency for molecule formation was around 20%. We show that the efficiency can be increased to nearly 100% if one first loads the atomic gases into an optical lattice of the appropriate depth and tunes the interspecies attraction to have exactly one atom of each species at an occupied lattice site. Our proposed s…
We show that single-component fermionic polar molecules confined to a 2D geometry and dressed by a microwave field, may acquire an attractive $1/r^3$ dipole-dipole interaction leading to superfluid p-wave pairing at sufficiently low temperatures even in the BCS regime. The emerging state is the topological $p_x+ip_y$ phase promising for topologically protected quantum information processing. The main decay channel is via collisional transitions to dressed states with lower energies and is rather slow, setting a lifetime of the order of seconds at 2D densities $\sim 10^8$ cm$^{-2}$.
Motivated by the experimental realization of quantum spin models of polar molecule KRb in optical lattices, we analyze the spin 1/2 dipolar Heisenberg model with competing anisotropic, long-range exchange interactions. We show that, by tilting the orientation of dipoles using an external electric field, the dipolar spin system on square lattice comes close to a maximally frustrated region similar, but not identical, to that of the $J_1$-$J_2$ model. This provides a simple yet powerful route to potentially realize a quantum spin liquid without the need for a triangular or kagome lattice. The gr…
While the interaction potential between two dipoles residing in a single plane is repulsive, in a system of two vertically adjacent layers of dipoles it changes from repulsive interaction in the long range to attractive interaction in the short range. Here we show that for dipolar excitons in semiconductor heterostructures, such a potential may give rise to bound states if two such excitons are excited in two separate layers, leading to the formation of vertically coupled dipolar exciton molecules. Our calculations prove the existence of such bound states and predict their binding energy as a …
The dipolar collision between ultracold polar molecules is an important topic both by its own right from the fundamental point of view and for the successful exploration of many-body physics with strong and long-range dipolar interactions. Here, we report the investigation of collisions between ultracold ground-state sodium-rubidium molecules in electric fields with induced electric dipole moments as large as 0.7$\;$D. We observe a step-wise enhancement of losses due to the coupling between different partial waves induced by the increasingly stronger anisotropic dipolar interactions. Varying t…
We discuss the realization of mesoscopic phases of dipolar gases relevant to current experiments with cold polar molecules and Rydberg atoms confined to two dimensions. We predict the existence of superfluid clusters, mesoscopic supersolids, and crystals for a small number of trapped particles, with no counterpart in the homogeneous situation. For certain strengths of the dipole-dipole interactions, the stabilization of purely {\it non-classical crystals} by quantum fluctuations is possible. We propose a magnification scheme to detect the spatial structure of these crystalline phases.
This paper reviews recent advances in the study of strongly interacting systems of dipolar molecules. Heteronuclear molecules feature large and tunable electric dipole moments, which give rise to long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions. Ultracold samples of dipolar molecules with long-range interactions offer a unique platform for quantum simulations and the study of correlated many-body physics. We provide an introduction to the physics of dipolar quantum gases, both electric and magnetic, and summarize the multipronged efforts to bring dipolar molecules into the quantum regime.…
We produce ultracold dense trapped samples of 87Rb133Cs molecules in their rovibrational ground state, with full nuclear hyperfine state control, by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) with efficiencies of 90%. We observe the onset of hyperfine-changing collisions when the magnetic field is ramped so that the molecules are no longer in the hyperfine ground state. A strong quadratic shift of the transition frequencies as a function of applied electric field shows the strongly dipolar character of the RbCs ground-state molecule. Our results open up the prospect of realizing stable bosoni…
Microscopic control over polar molecules with tunable interactions would enable realization of novel quantum phenomena. Using an applied electric field gradient, we demonstrate layer-resolved state preparation and imaging of ultracold potassium-rubidium molecules confined to two-dimensional planes in an optical lattice. The coherence time of rotational superpositions in individual layers is maximized by rotating the electric field relative to the optical trap polarization to achieve state-insensitive trapping. Molecules in adjacent layers interact via dipolar exchange of rotational angular mom…
We demonstrate microwave dressing on ultracold, fermionic ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K ground-state molecules and observe resonant dipolar collisions with cross sections exceeding three times the $s$-wave unitarity limit. The origin of these collisions is the resonant alignment of the approaching molecules' dipoles along the intermolecular axis, which leads to strong attraction. We explain our observations with a conceptually simple two-state picture based on the Condon approximation. Furthermore, we perform coupled-channels calculations that agree well with the experimentally observed collision rate…
Dipolar interactions support the formation of inter-site soliton molecules in a stack of quasi-1D traps. We show that the stability and properties of individual solitons, and soliton molecules in such a geometry crucially depend on the interplay between contact and dipolar interactions. In particular, two different quasi-1D soliton regimes are possible: a 1D soliton characterized by purely repulsive DDI and a 3D soliton for which a sufficiently large dipole moment renders the DDI attractive. Furthermore, we find that contrary to the case of dimers of polar molecules, the soliton dimers exhibit…
A two-dimensional dipolar Fermi gas in harmonic trap under rotation is studied by solving "ab initio" Kohn-Sham equations. The physical parameters used match those of ultracold gas of fermionic $^{23}Na^{40}K$ molecules, a prototype system of strongly interacting dipolar quantum matter, which has been created very recently. We find that, as the critical rotational frequency is approached and the system collapses into the lowest Landau level, an array of tightly packed quantum vortices develops, in spite of the non-superfluid character of the system. In this state the system looses axial symmet…
We investigate the particle-hole pair excitations of dipolar molecules in optical lattice, which can be described with an extended Bose-Hubbard model. For strong enough dipole-dipole interaction, the particle-hole pair excitations can form bound states in one and two dimensions. With decreasing dipole-dipole interaction, the energies of the bound states increase and merge into the particle-hole continuous spectrum gradually. The existence regions, the energy spectra and the wave functions of the bound states are carefully studied and the symmetries of the bound states are analyzed with group t…
We show that s-wave scattering resonances induced by dipolar interactions in a polar molecular gas have a universal large and positive effective range, which is very different from Feshbach resonances realized in cold atoms before, where the effective range is either negligible or negative. Such a difference has important consequence in many-body physics. At high temperature regime, a positive effective range gives rise to stronger repulsive interaction energy for positive scattering length, and weaker attractive interaction energy for negative scattering length. While at low-temperatures, we …
We analyze the nature of quantum phase transition to a superfluid state of flexible chains in a gas of polar bosonic molecules confined in a stack of $N$ identical 1d ("cigar" type) optical lattice layers and polarized perpendicularly to the layers. Monte Carlo simulations within the $J$-current model show that, in the absence of the inter-tube tunneling, the transition to the $N$-layered superfluid is in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless universality class in the one-particle density matrix channel. The inter-layer tunneling changes it to the $q=N$ 2d Potts universality. The low energy fiel…
By applying a circularly polarized and slightly blue-detuned microwave field with respect to the first excited rotational state of a dipolar molecule, one can engineer a long-range, shallow potential well in the entrance channel of the two colliding partners. As the applied microwave ac-field is increased, the long-range well becomes deeper and can support a certain numbers of bound states, which in turn bring the value of the molecule-molecule scattering length from a large negative value to a large positive one. We adopt an adimensional approach where the molecules are described by a rescale…
We report on the production of a degenerate Fermi gas of 53Cr atoms, polarized in the state F=9/2, m_F=-9/2, by sympathetic cooling with bosonic S=3, m_S=-3 52Cr atoms. We load in an optical dipole trap 3.10^4 53Cr atoms with 10^6 52Cr atoms. Despite this initial small number of fermionic atoms, we reach a final temperature of T=0.6 T_f (Fermi temperature), with up to 10^3 53Cr atoms. This surprisingly efficient evaporation stems from an inter-isotope scattering length |a_{BF}| = (85+/- 10) a_{Bohr} which is small enough to reduce evaporative losses of the fermionic isotope, but large enough t…
We show that dipolar bosons and fermions confined in a quasi-one-dimensional ring trap exhibit a rich variety of states because their interaction is inhomogeneous. For purely repulsive interactions, with increasing strength of the dipolar coupling there is a crossover from a gas-like state to an inhomogeneous crystal-like one. For small enough angles between the dipoles and the plane of the ring, there are regions with attractive interactions, and clustered states can form.
Molecules are the building blocks of matter and their control is key to the investigation of new quantum phases, where rich degrees of freedom can be used to encode information and strong interactions can be precisely tuned. Inelastic losses in molecular collisions, however, have greatly hampered the engineering of low-entropy molecular systems. So far, the only quantum degenerate gas of molecules has been created via association of two highly degenerate atomic gases. Here, we use an external electric field along with optical lattice confinement to create a two-dimensional (2D) Fermi gas of sp…
Ultracold polar molecules offer the possibility of exploring quantum gases with interparticle interactions that are strong, long-range, and spatially anisotropic. This is in stark contrast to the dilute gases of ultracold atoms, which have isotropic and extremely short-range, or "contact", interactions. The large electric dipole moment of polar molecules can be tuned with an external electric field; this provides unique opportunities such as control of ultracold chemical reactions, quantum information processing, and the realization of novel quantum many-body systems. In spite of intense exper…
The interaction between two bright solitons in a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) has been investigated aiming at finding the regimes when they form a stable bound state, known as soliton molecule. To study soliton interactions in BEC we employed a method similar to that used in experimental investigation of the interaction between solitons in optical fibers. The idea consists in creating two solitons at some spatial separation from each other at initial time $t_0$, and then measuring the distance between them at a later time $t_1 > t_0$. Depending on whether the distance between soliton…
We have realized long-lived ground-state polar molecules in a 3D optical lattice, with a lifetime of up to 25 s, which is limited only by off-resonant scattering of the trapping light. Starting from a 2D optical lattice, we observe that the lifetime increases dramatically as a small lattice potential is added along the tube-shaped lattice traps. The 3D optical lattice also dramatically increases the lifetime for weakly bound Feshbach molecules. For a pure gas of Feshbach molecules, we observe a lifetime of >20 s in a 3D optical lattice; this represents a 100-fold improvement over previous resu…
Bound structures among dipolar molecules in multilayers are a topic of great interest in the light of recent experiments that have demonstrated the feasibility of the setup. While it is known that two molecules in two adjacent layers will always bind, larger complexes have only been scarcely addressed thus far. Here we prove rigorously that three- and four-body states will never be bound when the dipoles are oriented perpendicular to the layers. The technique employed is general and can be used for more molecules/layers and other geometries. Our analytical findings are supported by numerical c…
We study the few-body physics of trapped atoms or molecules with electric or magnetic dipole moments aligned by an external field. Using exact numerical diagonalization appropriate for the strongly correlated regime, as well as a classical analysis, we show how Wigner localization emerges with increasing coupling strength. The Wigner states exhibit non-trivial geometries due to the anisotropy of the interaction. This leads to transitions between different Wigner states as the tilt angle of the dipoles with the confining plane is changed. Intriguingly, while the individual Wigner states are wel…
We show that recently suggested subwavelength lattices offer remarkable prospects for the observation of novel superfluids of fermionic polar molecules. It becomes realistic to obtain a topological $p$-wave superfluid of microwave-dressed polar molecules in 2D lattices at temperatures of the order of tens of nanokelvins, which is promising for topologically protected quantum information processing. Another foreseen novel phase is an interlayer $p$-wave superfluid of polar molecules in a bilayer geometry.
We study a system of dipolar molecules confined in a two-dimensional trap and subject to an optical square lattice. The repulsive long-range dipolar interaction $D/r^3$ favors an equilateral triangular arrangement of the molecules, which competes against the square symmetry of the underlying optical lattice with lattice constant $b$ and amplitude $V$. We find the minimal-energy states at the commensurate density $n = 1/b^2$ and establish the complete square-to-triangular transformation pathway of the lattice with decreasing $V$ involving period-doubled, solitonic, and distorted-triangular conf…
We consider fermionic polar molecules in a bilayer geometry where they are oriented perpendicularly to the layers, which permits both low inelastic losses and superfluid pairing. The dipole-dipole interaction between molecules of different layers leads to the emergence of interlayer superfluids. The superfluid regimes range from BCS-like fermionic superfluidity with a high $T_c$ to Bose-Einstein (quasi-)condensation of interlayer dimers, thus exhibiting a peculiar BCS-BEC crossover. We show that one can cover the entire crossover regime under current experimental conditions.
Non-Additivity of Microwave-Shielded Interactions between Dipolar Molecules
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Kepler University Linz（林茨约翰·开普勒大学理论物理研究所）；Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Atominstitut, TU Wien（维也纳量子科学与技术中心，原子研究所，维也纳工业大学）
We investigate the BCS pairing in a mixture of fermionic polar molecules with two different hyperfine states. We derive a set of coupled gap equations and find that this system supports both spin-singlet and -triplet BCS pairs. We also calculate the critical temperatures and the angular dependence of order parameters. In addition, by tuning short-range interaction between inter-species molecules, the transition between singlet and triplet paired states may be realized.
The observation of significant dipolar effects in gases of ultra-cold polar molecules typically demands a strong external electric field to polarize the molecules. We show that even in the absence of a significant polarization, dipolar effects may play a crucial role in the physics of polar molecules in bilayers, provided that the molecules in each layer are initially prepared in a different rotational state. Then, inter-layer dipolar interactions result in a non-local swap of the rotational state between molecules in different layers, even for weak applied electric fields. The inter-layer sca…
