Abstract
We report on the formation of heteronuclear quantum droplets in an attractive bosonic mixture of 41K and 87Rb. We observe long-lived self-bound states, both in free space and in an optical waveguide. In the latter case, the dynamics under the effect of a species-dependent force confirms their bound nature. By tuning the interactions from the weakly to the strongly attractive regime, we study the transition from expanding to localized states, in both geometries. We compare the experimental results with beyond mean-field theory and we find a good agreement in the full range of explored interactions. Our findings open up the production of long-lived droplets with important implications for further research.
Highlights
We report on the formation of heteronuclear quantum droplets in an attractive bosonic mixture of 41K and 87Rb
Interactions are ubiquitous in nature and understanding their effects is a primary challenge in physics, especially in many-body quantum systems
We first consider the dynamics in free space
Summary
Interactions are ubiquitous in nature and understanding their effects is a primary challenge in physics, especially in many-body quantum systems. In attractive bosonic mixtures the repulsive LHY term may stabilize the system against collapse, leading to the formation of self-bound droplets Very dilute, these states have a liquidlike behavior, characterized by a core with uniform density in the large atom number limit [7]. We study the size evolution and the center-of-mass dynamics of the mixture in a horizontal optical waveguide, in the presence of a species-dependent magnetic force In this geometry, where both the LHY correction and the radial confinement provide a mechanism to prevent the collapse [18], we observe the formation of a localized bound state whose centerof-mass follows a trajectory intermediate between those of two weakly attractive 41K and 87Rb clouds. Using two coupled generalized Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equations [19,20], including the LHY correction for heteronuclear mixtures [7,21]
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