8 research outputs found
Clock spectroscopy of interacting bosons in deep optical lattices
We report on high-resolution optical spectroscopy of interacting bosonic
Yb atoms in deep optical lattices with negligible tunneling. We prepare
Mott insulator phases with singly- and doubly-occupied isolated sites and probe
the atoms using an ultra-narrow "clock" transition. Atoms in singly-occupied
sites undergo long-lived Rabi oscillations. Atoms in doubly-occupied sites are
strongly affected by interatomic interactions, and we measure their inelastic
decay rates and energy shifts. We deduce from these measurements all relevant
collisional parameters involving both clock states, in particular the intra-
and inter-state scattering lengths
Non-linear Relaxation of Interacting Bosons Coherently Driven on a Narrow Optical Transition
We study the dynamics of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of
Yb atoms coherently driven on a narrow optical transition. The
excitation transfers the BEC to a superposition of states with different
internal and momentum quantum numbers. We observe a crossover with decreasing
driving strength between a regime of damped oscillations, where coherent
driving prevails, and an incoherent regime, where relaxation takes over.
Several relaxation mechanisms are involved: inelastic losses involving two
excited atoms, leading to a non-exponential decay of populations; Doppler
broadening due to the finite momentum width of the BEC and inhomogeneous
elastic interactions, both leading to dephasing and to damping of the
oscillations. We compare our observations to a two-component Gross-Pitaevskii
(GP) model that fully includes these effects. For small or moderate densities,
the damping of the oscillations is mostly due to Doppler broadening. In this
regime, we find excellent agreement between the model and the experimental
results. For higher densities, the role of interactions increases and so does
the damping rate of the oscillations. The damping in the GP model is less
pronounced than in the experiment, possibly a hint for many-body effects not
captured by the mean-field description.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; supplementary material available as ancillary
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Strong correlations in lossy one-dimensional quantum gases: From the quantum Zeno effect to the generalized Gibbs ensemble
We consider strong two-body losses in bosonic gases trapped in one-dimensional optical lattices. We exploit the separation of timescales typical of a system in the many-body quantum Zeno regime to establish a connection with the theory of the time-dependent generalized Gibbs ensemble. Our main result is a simple set of rate equations that capture the simultaneous action of coherent evolution and two-body losses. This treatment gives an accurate description of the dynamics of a gas prepared in a Mott insulating state and shows that its long-time behavior deviates significantly from mean-field analyses. The possibility of observing our predictions in an experiment with Yb174 in a metastable state is also discussed