Using an optical potential with subwavelength resolution in the form of sharp $δ$-like peaks, new potential landscapes are created with increased anharmonicity in placement of lattice band energies and more favorable energy scales. In particular, this makes the ultracold atom p-band gas more stable. The article outlines the details of the construction and discusses the p-band stability in canonical cosine optical lattice potential, double well potential, and a combination of a classical cosine potential with dark state peaked potential.
When two atoms interact in the presence of an anharmonic potential, such as an optical lattice, the center of mass motion cannot be separated from the relative motion. In addition to generating a confinement-induced resonance (or shifting the position of an existing Feshbach resonance), the external potential changes the resonance picture qualitatively by introducing new resonances where molecular excited center of mass states cross the scattering threshold. We demonstrate the existence of these resonances, give their quantitative characterization in an optical superlattice, and propose an exp…
A previously developed approach for the numerical treatment of two particles that are confined in a finite optical-lattice potential and interact via an arbitrary isotropic interaction potential has been extended to incorporate an additional anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction. The interplay of a model but realistic short-range Born-Oppenheimer potential and the dipole-dipole interaction for two confined particles is investigated. A variation of the strength of the dipole-dipole interaction leads to diverse resonance phenomena. In a harmonic confinement potential some resonances show similar…
We perform a theoretical and experimental study of a system of two ultracold atoms with tunable interaction in an elongated trapping potential. We show that the coupling of center-of-mass and relative motion due to an anharmonicity of the trapping potential leads to a coherent coupling of a state of an unbound atom pair and a molecule with a center of mass excitation. By performing the experiment with exactly two particles we exclude three-body losses and can therefore directly observe coherent molecule formation. We find quantitative agreement between our theory of inelastic confinement-induc…
We discuss the suitability of holographically generated optical potentials for the investigation of superfluidity in ultracold atoms. By using a spatial light modulator and a feedback enabled algorithm we generate a smooth ring with variable bright regions that can be dynamically rotated to stir ultracold atoms and induce superflow. We also comment on its future integration into a cold atoms experiment.
Berry's phase is investigated for ultracold atoms in a frequency modulated optical lattice. It is shown that Berry's phase appears due to Bloch oscillation and the periodic motion of the optical lattice. Particularly, Berry's phase for ultracold atoms under the gravitational force in an oscillating tight-binding optical lattice is calculated analytically. It is found that the Berry's phase depends linearly on the amplitude of the oscillation of the optical lattice.
We propose an arresting scheme for emulating the famous Faraday effect in ultracold atomic gases. Inspired by the similarities between the light field and bosonic atoms, we represent the light propagation in medium by the atomic transport in accompany of the laser-atom interaction. An artificial magneto-optic Faraday effect is readily signaled by the spin imbalance of atoms, with the setup of laser fields offering a high controllability for quantum manipulation. The present scheme is really feasible and can be realized with existing experimental techniques of ultracold atoms. It generalizes th…
Ultracold alkaline-earth atoms have now been widely explored for precision measurements and quantum simulation. Because of its unique atomic structure, alkaline earth atoms possess great advantages for quantum simulation and studying quantum many-body matters, such as simulating synthetic gauge field, Kondo physics and $SU(N)$ physics. To fully explore the potential of ultracold alkaline-earth atoms, these systems also need to be equipped with the capability of tuning the inter-atomic interaction to the strongly interacting regime. Recently several theoretical proposals and experimental demons…
In this review, we discuss the impact of the development of lasers on ultracold atoms and molecules and their applications. After a brief historical review of laser cooling and Bose-Einstein condensation, we present important applications of ultra cold atoms, including time and frequency metrology, atom interferometry and inertial sensors, atom lasers, simulation of condensed matter systems, production and study of strongly correlated systems, and production of ultracold molecules.
We investigate the competition of various exotic superfluid states in a chain of spin-polarized ultracold fermionic atoms with hyperfine spin $F = 3/2$ and s-wave contact interactions. We show that the ground state is an exotic inhomogeneous mixture in which two distinct superfluid phases --- spin-carrying pairs and singlet quartets --- form alternating domains in an extended region of the parameter space.
We report our realization of a parity-time (PT) symmetric non-Hermitian many-body system using cold atoms with dissipation. After developing a theoretical framework on PT-symmetric many-body systems using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice with controlled dissipation, we describe our experimental setup utilizing one-body atom loss as dissipation with special emphasis on calibration of important system parameters. We discuss loss dynamics observed experimentally.
We review recent developments in the use of magnetic lattices as a complementary tool to optical lattices for trapping periodic arrays of ultracold atoms and degenerate quantum gases. Recent advances include the realisation of Bose-Einstein condensation in multiple sites of a magnetic lattice of one-dimensional microtraps, the trapping of ultracold atoms in square and triangular magnetic lattices, and the fabrication of magnetic lattice structures with sub-micron period suitable for quantum tunnelling experiments. Finally, we describe a proposal to utilise long-range interacting Rydberg atoms …
We present first results on our implementation of a laser based accelerator for ultracold atoms. Atoms cooled to a temperature of 420 nK are confined and accelerated by means of laser tweezer beams and the atomic scattering is directly observed in laser absorption imaging. The optical collider has been characterized using Rb87 atoms in the |F=2,mF=2> state, but the scheme is not restricted to atoms in any particular magnetic substates and can readily be extended to other atomic species as well.
An absorption of a weak pulse by two identical atoms moving in a trap is investigated. Based on atom-light interactions we present a microscopic model of a two-body wave function diagnosis. We study the influence of pulse properties on the results. We show that a pulse duration impact a resulting one-photon and two-photons absorption probabilities significantly.
In this review article, we present the recent theoretical developments and some breakthrough experiments in cavity QED systems (optical and optomechanical systems) and also focus on the experimental realization of the theoretical proposals.
The use of a dynamic "accordion" lattice with ultracold atoms is demonstrated. Ultracold atoms of $^{87}$Rb are trapped in a two-dimensional optical lattice, and the spacing of the lattice is then increased in both directions from 2.2 to 5.5 microns. Atoms remain bound for expansion times as short as a few milliseconds, and the experimentally measured minimum ramp time is found to agree well with numerical calculations. This technique allows an experiment such as quantum simulations to be performed with a lattice spacing smaller than the resolution limit of the imaging system, while allowing i…
We propose a method to measure the superfluid fraction of an atomic gas. The method involves the use of a vector potential generated by optical beams with non-zero angular momentum to simulate uniform rotation. The induced change in angular momentum of the atomic gas can be measured spectroscopically. This allows a direct determination of the superfluid fraction.
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.
We report on controlled doping of an ultracold Rb gas with single neutral Cs impurity atoms. Elastic two-body collisions lead to a rapid thermalization of the impurity inside the Rb gas, representing the first realization of an ultracold gas doped with a precisely known number of impurity atoms interacting via s-wave collisions. Inelastic interactions are restricted to a single three-body recombination channel in a highly controlled and pure setting, which allows to determine the Rb-Rb-Cs three-body loss rate with unprecedented precision. Our results pave the way for a coherently interacting h…
We propose a way to simulate mesoscopic transport processes with counter-propagating wavepackets of ultracold atoms in quasi one-dimensional (1D) waveguides, and show quantitative agreement with analytical results. The method allows the study of a broad range of transport processes at the level of individual modes, not possible in electronic systems. Typically suppressed effects of quantum coherence become manifest, along with the effects of tunable interactions, which can be used to develop a simpler type of sensitive atom interferometer.
We show that conical intersections can be created in laboratory coordinates by dressing a parabolic trap for ultracold atoms or molecules with a combination of optical and static magnetic fields. The resulting ring trap can support single-particle states with half-integer rotational quantization and many-particle states with persistent flow. Two well-separated atomic or molecular states are brought into near-resonance by an optical field and tuned across each other with an inhomogeneous magnetic field. Conical intersections occur at the nodes in the optical field.
We report on the experimental implementation of tunable occupation-dependent tunneling in a Bose-Hubbard system of ultracold atoms via time-periodic modulation of the on-site interaction energy. The tunneling rate is inferred from a time-resolved measurement of the lattice site occupation after a quantum quench. We demonstrate coherent control of the tunneling dynamics in the correlated many-body system, including full suppression of tunneling as predicted within the framework of Floquet theory. We find that the tunneling rate explicitly depends on the atom number difference in neighboring lat…
The ultracold atoms in a moving optical lattice with its high controllability is a feasible platform to research the transport phenomenon. Here, we study the transport process of ultracold atoms at the D band in a one-dimensional optical lattice, and perform the manipulation of atomic transport by modulating the population proportion of S band and D band. In the experiment, we first load ultracold atoms into the optical lattice using shortcut method, and then accelerate the optical lattice by scanning the phase of lattice beams. The atomic transport in D band and S band is demonstrated respect…
We report the observation of quantum dynamical oscillations of ultracold atomic gases in the F and D bands of a single-well optical lattice. We are able to control the Bragg reflections at the Brillouin zone edge up to the third order. As a result, we can switch the quantum dynamics from oscillations across both the F and D bands to oscillations only within the F-band. Our capability to observe these remarkable oscillations comes from the innovative non-adiabatic technique which allows us to load ultracold atoms efficiently to the G-band of an optical lattice.
We investigate the dynamics of angular momentum states for a single ultracold atom trapped in two dimensional systems of sided coupled ring potentials. The symmetries of the system show that tunneling amplitudes between different ring states with variation of the winding number are complex. In particular, we demonstrate that in a triangular ring configuration the complex nature of the cross-couplings can be used to geometrically engineer spatial dark states to manipulate the transport of orbital angular momentum states via quantum interference.
We show that a type of two-body interaction, which depends on the momentum of the center of mass (COM) of these two particles, can be realized in ultracold atom gases with a laser-modulated magnetic Feshbach resonance (MFR). Here the MFR is modulated by two laser beams propagating along different directions, which can induce Raman transition between two-body bound states. The Doppler effect causes the two-atom scattering length to be strongly dependent on the COM momentum of these two atoms. As a result, the effective two-atom interaction is COM-momentum dependent, while the one-atom free Hami…
The study of dynamical tunnelling in a periodically driven anharmonic potential probes the quantum-classical transition via the experimental control of the effective Planck's constant for the system. In this paper we consider the prospects for observing dynamical tunnelling with ultracold atoms in magnetic microtraps on atom chips. We outline the driven anharmonic potentials that are possible using standard magnetic traps, and find the Floquet spectrum for one of these as a function of the potential strength, modulation, and effective Planck's constant. We develop an integrable approximation t…
Feshbach resonances are among the essential control tools used in ultracold atom experiments. However, for complex atomic species the theoretical characterization of resonances becomes challenging. For closely spaced resonances, the measurement of three-body losses does not provide sufficient resolution to discriminate them. For this reason, resonance spectroscopy of trapped isolated atoms is becoming the state of the art. Here we show that trapping the atoms in a double well potential such as an optical lattice or a pair of optical tweezers enables precise characterization of not only the res…
A measurement technique is described which has the potential to map the atomic site occupancies of ultracold atoms in a short-period three-dimensional optical lattice. The method uses accordion and pinning lattices, together with polarization gradient cooling and fluorescence detection, to measure the positions of individual atoms within the sample in three dimensions at a resolution of around half the atomic resonant wavelength. The method measures the site occupancy, rather than the parity of the site occupancy, of atoms in the lattice. It is expected that such measurements hold significant …
The quantum mechanical few-body problem at ultracold energies poses severe challenges to theoretical techniques, particularly when long-range interactions are present that decay only as a power-law potential. In this paper we review the techniques and progress in studies of universal few-body physics for ultracold atoms, particularly those related to long-range interactions.
We investigate the quantum dynamics of two interacting bosonic atoms confined in a one-dimensional anharmonic trap. The tunneling rate, an experimentally measurable parameter of the system, was calculated as a function of the effective coupling interatomic constant $g$ from the ground (n=N=0) and first excited atomic states in the trap with respect to relative (n=2,N=0) and center-of-mass (n=0,N=2) atomic motion. This allows to investigate the initial population and pair correlation, as well as the effective coupling constant $g$, of the system by comparing the calculated tunneling rate with t…
We show that simple laser configurations can give rise to "optical flux lattices", in which optically dressed atoms experience a periodic effective magnetic flux with high mean density. These potentials lead to narrow energy bands with non-zero Chern number. Optical flux lattices will greatly facilitate the achievement of the quantum Hall regime for ultracold atomic gases.
We show that the magnetic field produced by a chiral ferromagnetic film can be applied to control ultracold atoms. The film will act as a magnetic mirror or a reflection grating for ultracold atoms when it is in the helical phase or the skyrmion crystal phase respectively. By applying a bias magnetic field and a time-dependent magnetic field, one-dimensional or two-dimensional magnetic lattices including honeycomb, Kagome, triangular types can be created to trap the ultracold atoms. We have also discussed the trapping height, potential barrier, trapping frequency, and Majorana loss rate for ea…
We report on the controlled insertion of individual Cs atoms into an ultracold Rb gas at about 400 nK. This requires to combine the techniques necessary for cooling, trapping and manipulating single laser cooled atoms around the Doppler temperature with an experiment to produce ultracold degenerate quantum gases. In our approach, both systems are prepared in separated traps and then combined. Our results pave the way for coherent interaction between a quantum gas and a single or few neutral atoms of another species.
We present a method to transport Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in anharmonic traps and in the presence of atom-atom interactions in short times without residual excitation. Using a combination of a variational approach and inverse engineering methods, we derive a set of Ermakov-like equations that take into account the coupling between the center of mass motion and the breathing mode. By an appropriate inverse engineering strategy of those equations, we then design the trap trajectory to achieve the desired boundary conditions. Numerical examples for cubic or quartic anharmonicities are pro…
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices are a powerful tool for quantum simulation, precise measurement, and quantum computation. A fundamental problem in applying this quantum system is how to manipulate the higher bands or orbitals in Bloch states effectively. Here we mainly review our methods for manipulating high orbital ultracold atoms in optical lattices with different configurations. Based on these methods, we construct the atom-orbital qubit under nonadiabatic holonomic quantum control and Ramsey interferometry with trapped motional quantum states. Then we review the observation of the nov…
We show that current in a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) can trap ultracold atoms $<1 μ$m away with orders of magnitude less spatial noise than a metal trapping wire. This enables the creation of hybrid systems, which integrate ultracold atoms with quantum electronic devices to give extreme sensitivity and control: for example, activating a single quantized conductance channel in the 2DEG can split a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) for atom interferometry. In turn, the BEC offers unique structural and functional imaging of quantum devices and transport in heterostructures and graphene.
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…
Experimental studies with ultracold atoms have enabled major breakthroughs in understanding three-body physics, historically a fundamental yet challenging problem. This is because the interactions among ultracold atoms can be precisely varied using magnetically tunable scattering resonances known as Feshbach resonances. The collisions of ultracold atoms have been discovered to have many universal aspects near the unitarity limit. Away from this limit, many quantum states are expected to be active during a three-body collision, making the collisional observables practically unpredictable. Here …
Imaging ultracold atomic gases close to surfaces is an important tool for the detailed analysis of experiments carried out using atom chips. We describe the critical factors that need be considered, especially when the imaging beam is purposely reflected from the surface. In particular we present methods to measure the atom-surface distance, which is a prerequisite for magnetic field imaging and studies of atom surface-interactions.
We propose the experimental realization of (3+1) relativistic Dirac fermions using ultracold atoms in a rotating optical lattice or, alternatively, in a synthetic magnetic field. This approach has the advantage to give mass to the Dirac fermions by coupling the ultracold atoms to a Bragg pulse. A dimensional crossover from (3+1) to (2+1) Dirac fermions can be obtained by varying the anisotropy of the lattice. We also discuss under which conditions the interatomic potentials give rise to relativistically invariant interactions among the Dirac fermions.
The dispersion relation of ultracold atoms in variably shaped optical lattices can be tuned to resemble that of a relativistic particle, i.e. be linear instead of the usual nonrelativistic quadratic dispersion relation of a free atom. Cold atoms in such a lattice can be used to carry out quantum simulations of relativistic wave equation predictions. We begin this article by describing a Raman technique that allows to selectively load atoms into a desired Bloch band of the lattice near a band crossing. Subsequently, we review two recent experiments with quasirelativistic rubidium atoms in a bic…
The creation of ultracold molecules is currently limited to diatomic species. In this letter we present a theoretical description of the photoassociation of ultracold atoms and molecules to create ultracold excited triatomic molecules, thus being a novel example of light-assisted ultracold chemical reaction. The calculation of the photoassociation rate of ultracold Cs atoms with ultracold Cs$_2$ molecules in their rovibrational ground state is reported, based on the solution of the quantum dynamics involving the atom-molecule long-range interactions, and assuming a model potential for the shor…
Typical sources of ultracold atoms operate with a considerable delay between the delivery of ensembles due to sequential trapping and cooling schemes. Therefore, alternative schemes for the continuous generation of ultracold atoms are highly desirable. Here, we demonstrate the continuous loading of a magnetic trap from a quasi-continuous atom beam. We achieve a steady state with $3.8 \times 10^7$ magnetically trapped atoms and a temperature of $102 μ$K. The ensemble is protected from laser light sources, a requirement for its application for metrological tasks or sympathetic cooling. The conti…
We derive an analytical expression for the scattering amplitude of two ultracold atoms of arbitrary spin and with general spin-orbit (SO) coupling, on the basis of our recent work (Phys. Rev. A \textbf{86}, 053608 (2012)). As an application, we demonstrate that SO coupling can induce scattering resonance in the case with finite scattering length. The same approach can be applied to calculate the two-body bound state of SO-coupled ultracold atoms. For the ultracold spin-1/2 fermi gases in three- or two- dimensional systems with SO coupling, we also obtain the renormalization relation of effecti…
We introduce a general method for designing tailored lattices of magnetic microtraps for ultracold atoms, on the basis of patterned permanently magnetized films. A fast numerical algorithm is used to automatically generate patterns which provide optimal atom confinement while respecting desired lattice symmetries and trap parameters. The algorithm can produce finite and infinite lattices of any plane symmetry; we focus specifically on square and triangular lattices which are of interest to future experiments. Typical trap parameters are discussed as well as the impact of realistic imperfection…
We present a new technique for producing two- and three-dimensional Rashba-type spin-orbit couplings for ultracold atoms without involving light. The method relies on a sequence of pulsed inhomogeneous magnetic fields imprinting suitable phase gradients on the atoms. For sufficiently short pulse durations, the time-averaged Hamiltonian well approximates the Rashba Hamiltonian. Higher order corrections to the energy spectrum are calculated exactly for spin-1/2 and perturbatively for higher spins. The pulse sequence does not modify the form of rotationally symmetric atom-atom interactions. Final…
We propose a way of generating optical lattices embedded in photonic crystals. By setting up extended modes in photonic crystals, ultracold atoms can be mounted in different types of field intensity distributions. This novel way of constructing optical lattices can be used to produce more elaborate periodic potentials by manufacturing appropriate geometries of photonic crystals. We exemplify this with a square lattice and comment on the possibility of using geometries with defects.
The coupling of internal electronic excitations to vibrational modes of the external motion of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice is studied here in using a perturbation expansion in small atomic displacements. In the Mott insulator case with one atom per site, the resonance dipole-dipole coupling between neighboring sites can induce emission and absorption of vibrational quanta. Within a cavity in the strong exciton-photon coupling regime such coupling results in polariton-vibration interactions, which create a significant thermalization mechanism for polaritons toward their minimum energy…
Ultracold atoms can be used to perform quantum simulations of a variety of condensed matter systems, including spin systems. These progresses point to the implementation of the manipulation of quantum states and to observe and exploit the effect of quantum correlations. A natural direction along this line is provided by the possibility to perform quantum state transfer (QST). After presenting a brief discussion of the simulation of quantum spin chains with ultracold gases and reminding the basic facts of QST, we discuss how to potentially use the tools of present-day ultracold technology to im…
We propose a new method for creating far-field optical barrier potentials for ultracold atoms with widths that are narrower than the diffraction limit and can approach tens of nanometers. The reduced widths stem from the nonlinear atomic response to control fields that create spatially varying dark resonances. The subwavelenth barrier is the result of the geometric scalar potential experienced by an atom prepared in such a spatially varying dark state. The performance of this technique, as well as its applications to the study of many-body physics and to the implementation of quantum informati…
Three-dimensional topological gapless matters with gapless degeneracies protected by a topological invariant defined over a closed manifold in momentum space have attracted considerable interest in various fields ranging from condensed matter materials to ultracold atomic gases. As a highly controllable and disorder free system, ultracold atomic gases provide a versatile platform to simulate topological gapless matters. Here, the current progress in studies of topological gapless phenomena in three-dimensional cold atom systems is summarized in the review. It is mainly focused on Weyl points, …
We report the experimental determination of the scattering parameters for a p-wave Feshbach resonance in a single component Fermi gas of 6Li atoms in the lowest spin state. The time scale of the cross-dimensional relaxation reflects the elastic scattering rate of the atoms, and scattering parameters are determined from the scattering rate as a function of magnetic field by taking into account the momentum distribution and inhomogeneous density profile of the atoms in a trap. Precise determination of the scattering parameters for a p-wave Feshbach resonance is an important step toward the reali…
We investigate the occurence of Wigner-localization phenomena in bosonic dipolar ultracold few-body systems with Rashba-like spin-orbit coupling. We show that the latter strongly enhances the effects of the dipole-dipole interactions, allowing to reach the Wigner-localized regime for strengths of the dipole moment much smaller than those necessary in the spin-orbit-free case.
We propose and numerically study two permanent magnetic micro-structures for creating Ioffe-Pritchard microtraps. A bias magnetic field is used to vary the depth, trap frequencies and the minimum of each microtrap. After the Bose-Einstein condensation achievement, the bias magnetic field can be slowly removed to increase the trap barrier heights for more efficiently holding the Bose-Einstein condensates. Even without the external magnetic field, it is possible to hold ultracold atoms in the microtraps. These microtraps may also be useful for single atom experiments for quantum information proc…
We present a design for simulating quantum pumping of electrons in a mesoscopic circuit with ultra-cold atoms in a micro-magnetic chip trap. We calculate theoretical results for quantum pumping of both bosons and fermions, identifying differences and common features, including geometric behavior and resonance transmission. We analyze the feasibility of experiments with bosonic $^{87}$Rb and fermionic $^{40}$K atoms with an emphasis on reliable atomic current measurements.
