Based on the developed quantum microscopic theory, the interaction of weak electromagnetic radiation with dense ultracold atomic clouds is described in detail. The differential and total cooperative scattering cross sections are calculated for monochromatic radiation as particular examples of application of the general theory. The angular, spectral, and polarization properties of scattered light are determined. The dependence of these quantities on the sample size and concentration of atoms is studied and the influence of collective effects is analyzed.
We demonstrate a set of tools for microscopic control of neutral strontium atoms. We report single-atom loading into an array of sub-wavelength scale optical tweezers, light-shift free control of a narrow-linewidth optical transition, three-dimensional ground-state cooling, and high-fidelity nondestructive imaging of single atoms on sub-wavelength spatial scales. Extending the microscopic control currently achievable in single-valence-electron atoms to species with more complex internal structure, like strontium, unlocks a wealth of opportunities in quantum information science, including tweez…
We present the rigorous microscopic quantum theory of the interaction of ultracold Bose and Fermi gases with the electromagnetic field of vacuum and laser photons. The main attention has been paid to the consistent consideration of dynamical dipole-dipole interactions. The theory developed is shown to be consistent with the general principles of the canonical quantization of electromagnetic field in a medium. Starting from the first principles of QED we have derived the general system of Maxwell-Bloch equations for atomic creation and annihilation operators and the propagation equation for the…
The essential quantum many-body physics of an ultracold quantum gas relies on the single-particle Green's functions.\ We demonstrate that it can be extracted by the spectrum of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT).\ The single-particle Green's function can be reconstructed by the measurements of frequency moments in EIT spectroscopy.\ This optical measurement provides an efficient and nondestructive method to reveal the many-body properties, and we propose an experimental setup to realize it.\ Finite temperature and finite size effects are discussed, and we demonstrate the reconstruc…
Trapping of single ultracold atoms is an important tool for applications ranging from quantum computation and communication to sensing. However, most experimental setups, while very precise and versatile, can only be operated in specialized laboratory environments due to their large size, complexity and high cost. Here, we introduce a new trapping concept for ultracold atoms in optical tweezers based on micrometer-scale lenses that are 3D printed onto the tip of standard optical fibers. The unique properties of these lenses make them suitable for both trapping individual atoms and capturing th…
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 …
The quantum optical response of high density ultracold atomic systems is critical to a wide range of fundamentally and technically important physical processes. These include quantum image storage, optically based quantum repeaters and ultracold molecule formation. We present here a microscopic analysis of the light scattering on such a system, and we compare it with a corresponding description based on macroscopic Maxwell theory. Results are discussed in the context of the spectral resonance structure, time-dependent response, and the light localization problem.
We show that quantum interference-based coherent control is a highly efficient tool for tuning ultracold molecular collision dynamics, and is free from the limitations of commonly used methods that rely on external electromagnetic fields. By varying {the relative populations and} phases of an initial coherent superpositions of degenerate molecular states, we demonstrate complete coherent control over integral scattering cross sections in the ultracold $s$-wave regime of both the initial and final collision channels. The proposed control methodology is applied to ultracold O$_2$~+~O$_2$ collisi…
Zero-point energy of a trapped ultracold Fermi gas at unitarity: squeezing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and suppressing the Pauli principle to produce a superfluid state
High-density and ultracold atomic gases have emerged as promising media for storage of individual photons for quantum memory applications. In this paper we provide an overview of our theoretical and experimental efforts in this direction, with particular attention paid to manipulation of light storage (a) through complex recurrent optical scattering processes in very high density gases (b) by an external control field in a characteristic electromagnetically induced transparency configuration.
The recent advances in single atom detection and manipulation in experiments with ultracold quantum gases are reviewed. The discussion starts with the basic principles of trapping, cooling and detecting single ions and atoms. The realization of single atom detection in ultracold quantum gases is presented in detail and the employed methods, which are based on light scattering, electron scattering, field ionization and direct neutral particle detection are discussed. The microscopic coherent manipulation of single atoms in a quantum gas is also covered. Various examples are given in order to hi…
Thermalization of a system in the presence of a heat bath has been the subject of many theoretical investigations especially in the framework of solid-state physics. In this setting, the presence of a large bandwidth for the frequency distribution of the harmonic oscillators schematizing the heat bath is crucial, as emphasized in the Caldeira-Leggett model. By contrast, ultracold gases in atomic traps oscillate at well-defined frequencies and therefore seem to lie outside the Caldeira-Leggett paradigm. We introduce interaction Hamiltonians which allow us to adapt the model to an atomic physics…
We present a complete theoretical description of atomic storage states in the multimode framework by including spatial coherence in atomic collective operators and atomic storage states. We show that atomic storage states are Dicke states with the maximum cooperation number. In some limits, a set of multimode atomic storage states has been established in correspondence with multimode Fock states of the electromagnetic field. This gives better understanding of both the quantum and coherent information of optical field can be preserved and recovered in ultracold medium. In this treatment, we dis…
We consider in detail the situation of applying a time dependent external magnetic field to a 87Rb atomic Bose-Einstein condensate held in a harmonic trap, in order to adiabatically sweep the interatomic interactions across a Feshbach resonance to produce diatomic molecules. To this end, we introduce a minimal two-body Hamiltonian depending on just five measurable parameters of a Feshbach resonance, which accurately determines all low energy binary scattering observables, in particular, the molecular conversion efficiency of just two atoms. Based on this description of the microscopic collisio…
We consider the interaction of two level ultracold atoms resonant with a sinusoidal mode of the electromagnetic field in a high Q cavity. We found that well resolved resonances appear in the transmission coefficients even for actual interaction and cavity parameters. The probability of emission of one photon and the probability of transmission of an atom, when a number of coherent states is initially present in the cavity, are discussed. The interplay between the increasing width of the resonances and multi-peak steady-state photon-statistics is also studied. Furthermore, we compare our result…
Veselago pointed out that electromagnetic wave theory allows for materials with a negative index of refraction, in which most known optical phenomena would be reversed. A slab of such a material can focus light by negative refraction, an imaging technique strikingly different from conventional positive refractive index optics, where curved surfaces bend the rays to form an image of an object. Here we demonstrate Veselago lensing for matter waves, using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. A relativistic, i.e. photon-like, dispersion relation for rubidium atoms is realized with a bichromatic …
The goal of the present article is to review the major developments that have led to the current understanding of molecule-field interactions and experimental methods for manipulating molecules with electromagnetic fields. Molecule-field interactions are at the core of several, seemingly distinct, areas of molecular physics. This is reflected in the organization of this article, which includes sections on Field control of molecular beams, External field traps for cold molecules, Control of molecular orientation and molecular alignment, Manipulation of molecules by non-conservative forces, Ultr…
The term "long-range interactions" refers to electrostatic and magnetostatic potential energies between atoms and molecules with mutual distances ranging from a few tens to a few hundreds Bohr radii. The involved energies are much smaller than the usual chemical bond energies. However, they are comparable with the typical kinetic energies of particles in an ultracold gas ($T\ll 1K$), so that the long-range interactions play a central role in its dynamics. The progress of research devoted to ultracold gases shed a new light on the well-established topic of long-range interactions, because: (i) …
We study a one-dimensional system of interacting spinless fermions subject to a localized loss, where the interplay of gapless quantum fluctuations and particle interactions leads to an incarnation of the quantum Zeno effect of genuine many-body nature. This model constitutes a non-equilibrium counterpart of the paradigmatic Kane-Fisher potential barrier problem, and it exhibits strong interaction effects due to the gapless nature of the system. As a central result, we show that the loss probability is strongly renormalized near the Fermi momentum as a realization of the quantum Zeno effect, r…
We investigate the properties of two interacting ultracold polar molecules described as distinguishable quantum rigid rotors, trapped in a one-dimensional harmonic potential. The molecules interact via a multichannel two-body contact potential, incorporating the short-range anisotropy of intermolecular interactions including dipole-dipole interaction. The impact of external electric and magnetic fields resulting in Stark and Zeeman shifts of molecular rovibrational states is also investigated. Energy spectra and eigenstates are calculated by means of the exact diagonalization. The importance a…
The propagation of the electromagnetic field of a laser through a dense Bose gas is examined and nonlinear operator equations for the motion of the center of mass of the atoms are derived. The goal is to present a self-consistent set of coupled Maxwell-Bloch equations for atomic and electromagnetic fields generalized to include the atomic center-of-mass motion. Two effects are considered: The ultracold gas forms a medium for the Maxwell field which modifies its propagation properties. Combined herewith is the influence of the dipole-dipole interaction between atoms which leads to a density dep…
We propose a method for simulating 2+1-d compact lattice quantum-electrodynamics (QED), using ultracold atoms in optical lattices. In our model local Bose-Einstein condensates' phases correspond to the electromagnetic vector-potential, and the fluctuations of the local number operators represent the conjugate electric field. The gauge invariant Kogut-Susskind Hamiltonian is obtained as an effective low energy theory. The field is then coupled to external static charges. We show that in the strong coupling limit this gives rise to 'electric flux-tubes' and to confinement. The effect can be obse…
We propose and theoretically investigate a hybrid system composed of a crystal of trapped ions coupled to a cloud of ultracold fermions. The ions form a periodic lattice and induce a band structure in the atoms. This system combines the advantages of scalability and tunability of ultracold atomic systems with the high fidelity operations and detection offered by trapped ion systems. It also features close analogies to natural solid-state systems, as the atomic degrees of freedom couple to phonons of the ion lattice, thereby emulating a solid-state system. Starting from the microscopic many-bod…
Quantum control of reactive systems has enabled microscopic probes of underlying interaction potentials, the opening of novel reaction pathways, and the alteration of reaction rates using quantum statistics. However, extending such control to the quantum states of reaction outcomes remains challenging. In this work, we realize this goal through the nuclear spin degree of freedom, a result which relies on the conservation of nuclear spins throughout the reaction. Using resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization spectroscopy to investigate the products formed in bimolecular reactions between ultr…
Self organisation provides an elegant explanation for how complex structures emerge and persist throughout nature. Surprisingly often, these structures exhibit remarkably similar scale-invariant properties. While this is sometimes captured by simple models that feature a critical point as an attractor for the dynamics, the connection to real-world systems is exceptionally hard to test quantitatively. Here we observe three key signatures of self-organised criticality in the dynamics of a driven-dissipative gas of ultracold atoms: (i) self-organisation to a stationary state that is largely indep…
We report the experimental observation of strong two-color optical nonlinearity in an ultracold gas of $^{85}\mathrm{Rb}$-$^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atom mixture. By simultaneously coupling two probe transitions of $^{85}$Rb and $^{87}$Rb atoms to Rydberg states in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) configurations, we observe significant suppression of the transparency resonance for one probe field when the second probe field is detuned at $\sim1~\mathrm{GHz}$ and hitting the EIT resonance of the other isotope. Such a cross-absorption modulation to the beam propagation dynamics can be desc…
We study an ultracold gas of neutral atoms subject to the periodic optical potential generated by a high-$Q$ cavity mode. In the limit of very low temperatures, cavity field and atomic dynamics require a quantum description. Starting from a cavity QED single atom Hamiltonian we use different routes to derive approximative multiparticle Hamiltonians in Bose-Hubbard form with rescaled or even dynamical parameters. In the limit of large enough cavity damping the different models agree. Compared to free space optical lattices, quantum uncertainties of the potential and the possibility of atom-fiel…
More than eighty years ago, H. Bethe pointed out the existence of bound states of elementary spin waves in one-dimensional quantum magnets. To date, identifying signatures of such magnon bound states has remained a subject of intense theoretical research while their detection has proved challenging for experiments. Ultracold atoms offer an ideal setting to reveal such bound states by tracking the spin dynamics after a local quantum quench with single-spin and single-site resolution. Here we report on the direct observation of two-magnon bound states using in-situ correlation measurements in a …
We theoretically investigate the generation of microscopic atomic NOON states, corresponding to the coherent |N,0> + |0,N> superposition with N ~ 5 particles, via collective tunneling of interacting ultracold bosonic atoms within a symmetric double-well potential in the self-trapping regime. We show that a periodic driving of the double well with suitably tuned amplitude and frequency parameters allows one to substantially boost this tunneling process without altering its collective character. The time scale to generate the NOON superposition, which corresponds to half the tunneling time and w…
The simultaneous presence of two competing inter-particle interactions can lead to the emergence of new phenomena in a many-body system. Among others, such effects are expected in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, subject to dipole-dipole interaction and short-range repulsion. Magnetic quantum gases and in particular Dysprosium gases, offering a comparable short-range contact and a long-range dipolar interaction energy, remarkably exhibit such emergent phenomena. In addition an effective cancellation of mean-field effects of the two interactions results in a pronounced importance of quantum-m…
Electron lattice potentials for ultracold atoms using circular Rydberg orbitals
Max-Planck Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme（马克斯·普朗克复杂系统物理研究所）；Joint Quantum Centre (JQC) Durham-Newcastle, Department of Chemistry, Durham University（杜伦大学化学系）；Physikalisches Institut and Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology, Universität Stuttgart（斯图加特大学第五物理研究所及综合量子科学技术中心）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University（普渡大学物理与天文学系）
"Bottom-up" approaches to the many-body physics of fermions have demonstrated recently precise number and site-resolved preparations with tunability of interparticle interactions in single-well, SW, and double-well, DW, nano-scale confinements created by manipulating ultracold fermionic atoms with optical tweezers. These experiments emulate an analogue-simulator mapping onto the requisite microscopic hamiltonian, approaching realization of Feynman's vision of quantum simulators that "will do exactly the same as nature". Here we report on exact benchmark configuration-interaction computational …
An ensemble of excited atoms can synchronize emission of light collectively in a process known as superradiance when its characteristic size is smaller than the wavelength of emitted photons. The underlying superradiance depends strongly on electromagnetic (photon) fields surrounding the atomic ensemble. High mode densities of microwave photons from $300\,$K blackbody radiation (BBR) significantly enhance decay rates of Rydberg states to neighbouring states, enabling superradiance that is not possible with bare vacuum induced spontaneous decay. Here we report observations of the superradiance …
We present an in-depth many-body investigation of the so-called mesoscopic molecular ions that can build-up when an ion is immersed into an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in one dimension. To this end, we employ the Multi-Layer Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree method for Mixtures of ultracold bosonic species for solving the underlying many-body Schrödinger equation. This enables us to unravel the actual structure of such massive charged molecules from a microscopic perspective. Laying out their phase diagram with respect to atom number and interatomic interaction strength, we determ…
A microscopic configuration-interaction (CI) methodology is introduced to enable bottom-up Schroedinger-equation emulation of unconventional superconductivity in ultracold optical traps. We illustrate the method by exploring the properties of Lithium-6 atoms in a single square plaquette in the hole-pairing regime, and by analyzing the entanglement (symmetry-preserving) and disentanglement physics (via symmetry-breaking, associated with the separation of charge and spin density waves) of two coupled plaquettes in the same regime. The single-occupancy RVB states contribute only partially to the …
High-resolution addressing of individual ultracold atoms, trapped ions or solid state emitters allows for exquisite control in quantum optics experiments. This becomes possible through large aperture magnifying optics that project microscopic light patterns with diffraction limited performance. We use programmable amplitude holograms generated on a digital micromirror device to create arbitrary microscopic beam shapes with full phase and amplitude control. The system self-corrects for aberrations of up to several $λ$ and reduces them to $λ/50$, leading to light patterns with a precision on the…
Trapping ultracold atoms in optical lattices enabled numerous breakthroughs uniting several disciplines. Coupling these systems to quantized light leads to a plethora of new phenomena and has opened up a new field of study. Here we introduce a physically novel source of competition in a many-body strongly correlated system: We prove that quantum backaction of global measurement is able to efficiently compete with intrinsic short-range dynamics of an atomic system. The competition becomes possible due to the ability to change the spatial profile of a global measurement at a microscopic scale co…
Ultracold atom-traps on a chip enhances the practical application of atom traps in quantum information processing, sensing, and metrology. Plasmon mediated near-field optical potentials are promising for trapping atoms. The combination of plasmonic nanostructures and ultracold atoms has the potential to create a two dimensional array of neutral atoms with lattice spacing smaller than that of lattices created from interfering light fields -- the optical lattices. We report the design, fabrication and characterization of a nano-scale array of near-field optical traps for neutral atoms using plas…
We develop a dissipative quantum state preparation scheme for the creation of phase- and number-squeezed states. It utilizes ultracold atoms in a double-well configuration immersed in a background Bose-Einstein condensate, with the latter consisting of an atom species different from the atoms in the double well and acting as a dissipative quantum reservoir. We derive a master equation for this system starting from microscopic physics, and show that squeezing develops on a time scale proportional to $1/N$, where $N$ is the number of particles in the double well. This scaling, caused by bosonic …
We develop a general theory to study the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in ultracold quantum gases, applicable for both Bose and Fermi gases with arbitrary inter-particle interaction strength. We show that, in the weak probe field limit, the EIT spectrum is solely determined by the single particle Green's function of the ground state atoms, and reflects interesting quantum many-body effects when atoms are virtually coupled to the low-lying Rydberg states. As an example, we apply our theory to 1D Luttinger liquid, Bose-Mott insulator state, and the superfluid state of two-compon…
The low-energy spectrum of three particles interacting via nearly resonant two-body interactions in the Efimov regime is set by the so-called three-body parameter. We show that the three-body parameter is essentially determined by the zero-energy two-body correlation. As a result, we identify two classes of two-body interactions for which the three-body parameter has a universal value in units of their effective range. One class involves the universality of the three-body parameter recently found in ultracold atom systems. The other is relevant to short-range interactions that can be found in …
We systematically develop the full quantum theory for the electromagnetic induced transparency (EIT) and slow light properties in ultracold Bose and Fermi gases. It shows a very different property from the classical theory which assumes frozen atomic motion. For example, the speed of light inside the atomic gases can be changed dramatically near the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature, while the presence of the Fermi sea can destroy the EIT effect even at zero temperature. From experimental point of view, such quantum EIT property is mostly manifested in the counter-propagating excitation s…
We analyze a realistic microscopic model for electronic scattering with the neutral differential delay equations of motion of point charges of the Wheeler-Feynman electrodynamics. We propose a microscopic model according to the electrodynamics of point charges, complex enough to describe the essential physics. Our microscopic model reaches a simple qualitative agreement with the experimental results as regards interference in double-slit scattering and in electronic scattering by crystals. We discuss our model in the light of existing experimental results, including a qualitative disagreement …
We show that the vacuum of electromagnetic field has intrinsic partial spatial coherence in frequency domain which effectively extends over regions of the order of wavelength $λ$. This spatial coherence leads to a dynamical coupling between atoms and is the cause of source correlations and Wolf shifts. We show how the source spatial correlations can lead to tailor made coherent emissions. We discuss the universality of source correlation effects and presents several application.
We study a general problem of the translational/rotational/vibrational/electronic dynamics of a diatomic molecule exposed to an interaction with an arbitrary external electromagnetic field. The theory developed in this paper is relevant to a variety of specific applications. Such as, alignment or orientation of molecules by lasers, trapping of ultracold molecules in optical traps, molecular optics and interferometry, rovibrational spectroscopy of molecules in the presence of intense laser light, or generation of high order harmonics from molecules. Starting from the first quantum mechanical pr…
We give a self-contained introduction to the physics of ultracold atoms using functional integral techniques. Based on a consideration of the relevant length scales, we derive the universal effective low energy Hamiltonian describing ultracold alkali atoms. We then introduce the concept of the effective action, which generalizes the classical action principle to full quantum status and provides an intuitive and versatile tool for practical calculations. This framework is applied to weakly interacting degenerate bosons and fermions in the spatial continuum. In particular, we discuss the related…
Identification and understanding of the evolution of interference patterns in two-particle momentum correlations as a function of the strength of interatomic interactions are important in explorations of the nature of quantum states of trapped particles. Together with the analysis of two-particle spatial correlations, they offer the prospect of uncovering fundamental symmetries and structure of correlated many-body states, as well as opening vistas into potential control and utilization of correlated quantum states as quantum information resources. With the use of the second-order density matr…
We investigate the coupled dynamics of charge and energy in interacting lattice models with dipole conservation. We formulate a generic hydrodynamic theory for this combination of fractonic constraints and numerically verify its applicability to the late-time dynamics of a specific bosonic quantum system by developing a microscopic non-equilibrium quantum field theory. Employing a self-consistent $1/N$ approximation in the number of field components, we extract all entries of a generalized diffusion matrix and determine their dependence on microscopic model parameters. We discuss the relation …
We present a microscopic quantum theory of light-matter interaction in pristine sheets of two-dimensional semiconductors coupled to localized electromagnetic resonators such as optical nanocavities or plasmonic particles. The light-matter interaction breaks the translation symmetry of excitons in the two-dimensional lattice, and we find that this symmetry-breaking interaction leads to the formation of a localized exciton state, which mimics the spatial distribution of the electromagnetic field of the resonator. The localized exciton state is in turn coupled to an environment of residual excito…
Gauge fields are central in our modern understanding of physics at all scales. At the highest energy scales known, the microscopic universe is governed by particles interacting with each other through the exchange of gauge bosons. At the largest length scales, our universe is ruled by gravity, whose gauge structure suggests the existence of a particle - the graviton - that mediates the gravitational force. At the mesoscopic scale, solid-state systems are subjected to gauge fields of different nature: materials can be immersed in external electromagnetic fields, but they can also feature emergi…
Mobile impurity atoms immersed in Bose-Einstein condensates provide a new platform for exploring Bose polarons. Recent experimental advances in the field of ultracold atoms make it possible to realize such systems with highly tunable microscopic parameters and to explore equilibrium and dynamical properties of polarons using a rich toolbox of atomic physics. In this paper we present a detailed theoretical analysis of Bose polarons in one dimensional systems of ultracold atoms. By combining a non-perturbative renormalization group approach with numerically exact diffusion Monte Carlo calculatio…
