1D Optical Lattice Research Articles

Observation of 1S0-3P0 transition of bosonic strontium in the Lamb-Dicke regime

We report experiments on the observation of the 1S0-3P0 transition spectrum of 88Sr in the Lamb-Dicke regime. After going through a two-stage magneto-optical trap (MOT), 88Sr cold atoms with number of about 1 \times 105 and a longitudinal temperature of 8.4 μK are loaded into a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice, which is realized with a semiconductor laser at 813.4 nm. Using the magnetic field-inducing 3P1 state mixing into 3P0 state, the spectroscopy of the 1S0-3P0 transition with a linewidth of 180 Hz is detected.

Probing the Axis Alignment of an Ultracold Spin-polarizedRb2Molecule

We present a novel method for probing the alignment of the molecular axis of an ultracold, nonpolar dimer. These results are obtained using diatomic ^{87}Rb_{2} molecules in the vibrational ground state of the lowest triplet potential a^{3}Σ_{u}^{+} trapped in a 3D optical lattice. We measure the molecular polarizabilities, which are directly linked to the alignment, along each of the x, y, and z directions of the lab coordinate system. By preparing the molecules in various, precisely defined rotational quantum states we can control the degree of alignment of the molecular axis with high precision over a large range. Furthermore, we derive the dynamical polarizabilities for a laser wavelength of 1064.5nm parallel and orthogonal to the molecular axis of the dimer, α_{∥}=(8.9±0.9)×10^{3} a.u. and α_{⊥}=(0.9±0.4)×10^{3} a.u., respectively. Our findings highlight that the depth of an optical lattice strongly depends on the rotational state of the molecule, which has to be considered in collision experiments. The present work paves the way for reaction studies between aligned molecules in the ultracold temperature regime.

Rotating condensed-boson gases in a 1D lattice at finite temperature

In this paper, we study the thermodynamic properties of a rotating boson gases in a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice at finite temperature. Our system is formed by loading three-dimensional boson-clouds into 1D optical lattice and subjected to rotate with angular velocity Ω about the z-axis (rotating condensate in a quasi-two-dimensional trap). We employ the semiclassical approximation to calculate the condensate fraction, critical temperature and the heat capacity of the system. The calculated results show that the rotating condensates in a quasi-two-dimensional have interesting properties which are absent in both three or pure two-dimensional systems. Our results can be extended to investigate the current experiments of rotating Bose–Einstein condensation produced or transferred in one-dimensional optical lattices.

Protected subspace Ramsey spectroscopy

We study a modified Ramsey spectroscopy technique employing slowly decaying states for quantum metrology applications using dense ensembles. While closely positioned atoms exhibit super-radiant collective decay and dipole-dipole induced frequency shifts, recent results [L. Ostermann, H. Ritsch, and C. Genes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 123601 (2013)] suggest the possibility to suppress such detrimental effects and achieve an even better scaling of the frequency sensitivity with interrogation time than for noninteracting particles. Here we present an in-depth analysis of this ``protected subspace Ramsey technique'' using improved analytical modeling and numerical simulations including larger three-dimensional (3D) samples. Surprisingly we find that using subradiant states of $N$ particles to encode the atomic coherence yields a scaling of the optimal sensitivity better than $1/\sqrt{N}$. Applied to ultracold atoms in 3D optical lattices we predict a precision beyond the single atom linewidth.

Observations ofλ/4structure in a low-loss radio-frequency-dressed optical lattice

We load a Bose-Einstein condensate into a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice altered through the use of radiofrequency (rf) dressing. The rf resonantly couples the three levels of the $^{87}$Rb $F=1$ manifold and combines with a spin-dependent "bare" optical lattice to result in adiabatic potentials of variable shape, depth, and spatial frequency content. We choose dressing parameters such that the altered lattice is stable over lifetimes exceeding tens of ms at higher depths than in previous work. We observe significant differences between the BEC momentum distributions of the dressed lattice as compared to the bare lattice, and find general agreement with a 1D band structure calculation informed by the dressing parameters. Previous work using such lattices was limited by very shallow dressed lattices and strong Landau-Zener tunnelling loss between adiabatic potentials, equivalent to failure of the adiabatic criterion. In this work we operate with significantly stronger rf coupling (increasing the avoided-crossing gap between adiabatic potentials), observing dressed lifetimes of interest for optical lattice-based analogue solid-state physics.

Quantum phases of hard-core dipolar bosons in coupled one-dimensional optical lattices

Hard-core dipolar bosons trapped in a parallel stack of N>=2 1D optical lattices (tubes) can develop several phases made of composites of particles from different tubes: superfluids, supercounterfluids and insulators as well as mixtures of those. Bosonization analysis shows that these phases are threshold-less with respect to the dipolar interaction, with the key "control knob" being filling factors in each tube, provided the inter-tube tunneling is suppressed. The effective ab-initio quantum Monte Carlo algorithm capturing these phases is introduced and some results are presented.

Probing the Energy Spectrum in the Vicinity of Dirac Points with Landau—Zener Transition

Recently a new type of experiment, i.e., Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in honeycomb optical potential, realized Landau—Zener transition in the vicinity of Dirac point in 2D optical lattice. We show that the slope of Dirac cone is related to the transition probability of Landau—Zener transition. Therefore, it provides a new tool to directly detect the energy spectrum in the vicinity of Dirac point. Moreover, we numerically demonstrate that our scheme is feasible and effective in a large range of the parameter of anisotropy.

Observation of two-orbital spin-exchange interactions with ultracold SU(N)-symmetric fermions

We report on the direct observation of spin-exchanging interactions in a two-orbital SU(N)-symmetric quantum gas of ytterbium in an optical lattice. The two orbital states are represented by two different (meta-)stable electronic configurations of fermionic Yb-173. A strong spin-exchange between particles in the two separate orbitals is mediated by the contact interaction between atoms, which we characterize by clock shift spectroscopy in a 3D optical lattice. We find the system to be SU(N)-symmetric within our measurement precision and characterize all relevant scattering channels for atom pairs in combinations of the ground and the excited state. Elastic scattering between the orbitals is dominated by the antisymmetric channel, which leads to the strong spin-exchange coupling. The exchange process is directly observed, by characterizing the dynamic equilibration of spin imbalances between two large ensembles in the two orbital states, as well as indirectly in atom pairs via interaction shift spectroscopy in a 3D lattice. The realization of a stable SU(N)-symmetric two-orbital Hubbard Hamiltonian opens the route towards experimental quantum simulation of condensed-matter models based on orbital interactions, such as the Kondo lattice model.

Tuning the quantum phase transition of bosons in optical lattices via periodic modulation of thes-wave scattering length

We consider interacting bosons in a 2D square and a 3D cubic optical lattice with a periodic modulation of the s-wave scattering length. At first we map the underlying periodically driven Bose-Hubbard model for large enough driving frequencies approximately to an effective time-independent Hamiltonian with a conditional hopping. Combining different analytical approaches with quantum Monte Carlo simulations then reveals that the superfluid-Mott insulator quantum phase transition still exists despite the periodic driving and that the location of the quantum phase boundary turns out to depend quite sensitively on the driving amplitude. A more detailed quantitative analysis shows even that the effect of driving can be described within the usual Bose-Hubbard model provided that the hopping is rescaled appropriately with the driving amplitude. This finding indicates that the Bose-Hubbard model with a periodically driven s-wave scattering length and the usual Bose-Hubbard model belong to the same universality class from the point of view of critical phenomena.

Two-stage laser cooling and optical trapping of thulium atoms

We propose to use the magnetic-dipole transition at coupling two ground state fine-structure components of thulium (Tm), as a ‘clock transition’ in optical clocks. We have demonstrated first stage laser cooling of Tm atoms down to a temperature of 25 K using a strong transition at and we have also shown preliminary results for second stage cooling using a weaker transition at (natural linewidth γG = 350 kHz). Laser cooled atoms have been trapped in an optical dipole trap and in a 1D optical lattice operating near 532 nm.

Escape dynamics of a Bose-Hubbard dimer out of a trap

We consider a potential scattering of Bose-Hubbard dimer in 1D optical lattice. A numerical approach based on effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian has been developed for solving the scattering problem. It allows to compute the tunneling and dissociation probabilities for arbitrary shape of the potential barrier and arbitrary kinetic energy of the dimer. The developed approach has been used to address the problem of two-particle decay out of a trap. In particular, it is shown that the presence of dissociation channels significantly decreases non-escape probability due to single-particle escape to those channels.

Accurate one-dimensional effective description of realistic matter-wave gap solitons

We consider stationary matter-wave gap solitons realized in Bose–Einstein condensates loaded in one-dimensional (1D) optical lattices and investigate whether the effective 1D equation proposed in Muñoz Mateo and Delgado (2008 Phys. Rev. A 77 013617) can be a reliable alternative to the three-dimensional treatment of this kind of system in terms of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation (GPE). Our results demonstrate that, unlike the standard 1D GPE (which is not applicable in most realistic situations), the above effective model is able to correctly predict the distinctive trajectories characterizing the different gap soliton families as well as the corresponding axial wavefunctions along the entire band gaps. It can also predict the stability properties of the different gap soliton families as follows from both a linear stability analysis and a representative set of numerical computations. In particular, by numerically solving the corresponding Bogoliubov–de Gennes equations we show that the effective 1D model gives the correct spectrum of the complex eigenfrequencies responsible for the dynamical stability of the system, thus providing us with a useful tool for the physical description of stationary matter-wave gap solitons in 1D optical lattices.

Thermodynamic properties of a rotating Bose–Einstein condensation in a 2D optical lattice

In this paper, we consider the thermodynamic properties of a rotating Bose–Einstein condensation in a 2D optical lattice. A modified semiclassical approximation is suggested to calculate the condensate fraction, the transition temperature and the heat capacity. Our approach provides a consistent picture for the role of the optical potential and the rotation rate on the temperature dependence for the thermodynamic properties. The outcome results furnish useful qualitatively theoretical results for the future BEC experiments in such traps.

Majorana fermions with spin-orbit coupled cold atom in one-dimensional optical lattices

We propose an alternative experimental scheme to detect the non-Abelian statistics of the Majorana fermions (MF) with a trapped atomic bosonic gas subject to a spin-orbit coupling in 1D optical lattices. The spin-orbit coupling leads to a faithful simulation of an arbitrary tunable XY spin model, where the anisotropy of the effective spin coupling can be controlled by adjusting the optical potentials, Feshbach resonance, and spin-orbit coupling. MF are created at the ends of the optical lattice segment in topological phase. By controlling the different addressing laser beams, one can move, braid, and exchange them. We also show that the non-Abelian statistics of MF can be demonstrated through distinguishing the states before and after braiding by detecting the parity operator of collective spin states.

Quantum phases in degenerate-p-orbital attractive one-dimensional fermionic optical lattices

We examine quantum phases emerged by double degeneracy of $p$-orbital bands in attractive atomic Fermi gases loaded on a 1D optical lattice. Our numerical simulations by the density-matrix renormalization group predict the emergence of a state with a charge excitation gap, the Haldane insulator phase. A mapping onto an effective spin-$1$ model reveals its physical origin. Moreover, we show that population imbalance leads to richer diversity of the quantum phases, including a phase-separated polarized state. Finally, we study the effects of harmonic trap potential in this 1D chain.

Effective equations for matter-wave gap solitons in higher-order transversal states

We demonstrate that an important class of nonlinear stationary solutions of the three-dimensional (3D) Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) exhibiting nontrivial transversal configurations can be found and characterized in terms of an effective one-dimensional (1D) model. Using a variational approach we derive effective equations of lower dimensionality for BECs in (m,n(r)) transversal states (states featuring a central vortex of charge m as well as n(r) concentric zero-density rings at every z plane) which provides us with a good approximate solution of the original 3D problem. Since the specifics of the transversal dynamics can be absorbed in the renormalization of a couple of parameters, the functional form of the equations obtained is universal. The model proposed finds its principal application in the study of the existence and classification of 3D gap solitons supported by 1D optical lattices, where in addition to providing a good estimate for the 3D wave functions it is able to make very good predictions for the μ(N) curves characterizing the different fundamental families. We have corroborated the validity of our model by comparing its predictions with those from the exact numerical solution of the full 3D GPE.

Collective Excitations of an Imbalanced Fermion Gas in a 1D Optical Lattice

The collective excitations that minimize the Helmholtz free energy of a population-imbalanced mixture of a $^{6}$Li gas loaded in a quasi one-dimensional optical lattice are obtained. These excitations reveal a rotonic branch after solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation under a generalized random phase approximation based on a single-band Hubbard Hamiltonian. The phase diagram describing stability regions of Fulde-Farrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov and Sarma phases is also analyzed.

Formation and decay of Bose-Einstein condensates in an excited band of a double-well optical lattice

We study the formation and collision-aided decay of an ultra-cold atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in the first excited band of a double-well 2D-optical lattice with weak harmonic confinement in the perpendicular $z$ direction. This lattice geometry is based on an experiment by Wirth et al. The double well is asymmetric, with the local ground state in the shallow well nearly degenerate with the first excited state of the adjacent deep well. We compare the band structure obtained from a tight-binding (TB) model with that obtained numerically using a plane wave basis. We find the TB model to be in quantitative agreement for the lowest two bands, qualitative for next two bands, and inadequate for even higher bands. The band widths of the excited bands are much larger than the harmonic oscillator energy spacing in the $z$ direction. We then study the thermodynamics of a non-interacting Bose gas in the first excited band. We estimate the condensate fraction and critical temperature, $T_c$, as functions of lattice parameters. For typical atom numbers, the critical energy $k_BT_c$, with $k_B$ the Boltzmann constant, is larger than the excited band widths and harmonic oscillator energy. Using conservation of total energy and atom number, we show that the temperature increases after the lattice transformation. Finally, we estimate the time scale for a two-body collision-aided decay of the condensate as a function of lattice parameters. The decay involves two processes, the dominant one in which both colliding atoms decay to the ground band, and the second involving excitation of one atom to a higher band. For this estimate, we have used TB wave functions for the lowest four bands, and numerical estimates for higher bands. The decay rate rapidly increases with lattice depth, but stays smaller than the tunneling rate between the $s$ and $p$ orbitals in adjacent wells.

Observation of dipolar spin-exchange interactions with lattice-confined polar molecules

With the production of polar molecules in the quantum regime, long-range dipolar interactions are expected to facilitate understanding of strongly interacting many-body quantum systems and to realize lattice spin models for exploring quantum magnetism. In ordinary atomic systems, where contact interactions require wavefunction overlap, effective spin interactions on a lattice can be mediated by tunnelling, through a process referred to as superexchange; however, the coupling is relatively weak and is limited to nearest-neighbour interactions. In contrast, dipolar interactions exist even in the absence of tunnelling and extend beyond nearest neighbours. This allows coherent spin dynamics to persist even for gases with relatively high entropy and low lattice filling. Measured effects of dipolar interactions in ultracold molecular gases have been limited to the modification of inelastic collisions and chemical reactions. Here we use dipolar interactions of polar molecules pinned in a three-dimensional optical lattice to realize a lattice spin model. Spin is encoded in rotational states of molecules that are prepared and probed by microwaves. Resonant exchange of rotational angular momentum between two molecules realizes a spin-exchange interaction. The dipolar interactions are apparent in the evolution of the spin coherence, which shows oscillations in addition to an overall decay of the coherence. The frequency of these oscillations, the strong dependence of the spin coherence time on the lattice filling factor and the effect of a multipulse sequence designed to reverse dynamics due to two-body exchange interactions all provide evidence of dipolar interactions. Furthermore, we demonstrate the suppression of loss in weak lattices due to a continuous quantum Zeno mechanism. Measurements of these tunnelling-induced losses allow us to determine the lattice filling factor independently. Our work constitutes an initial exploration of the behaviour of many-body spin models with direct, long-range spin interactions and lays the groundwork for future studies of many-body dynamics in spin lattices.

Slow Thermalization between a Lattice and Free Bose Gas

Using a 3D spin-dependent optical lattice, we study thermalization and energy exchange between two ultracold Bose gases, one of which is strongly correlated and bound to the lattice and another that is free from the lattice potential. Disruption of interspecies thermalization is revealed through measurements of condensate fraction after the lattice is superimposed on the parabolic confining potential. By selectively heating the lattice-bound species and measuring the rate of heat transfer to the free state, suppression of energy exchange is observed. Comparison with a Fermi's golden rule prediction confirms that this effect is caused by a dispersion mismatch that reduces the phase space available for elastic collisions. This result has critical implications for methods proposed to cool strongly correlated lattice gases.