175 research outputs found
Control of the interaction in a Fermi-Bose mixture
We control the interspecies interaction in a two-species atomic quantum
mixture by tuning the magnetic field at a Feshbach resonance. The mixture is
composed by fermionic 40K and bosonic 87Rb. We observe effects of the large
attractive and repulsive interaction energy across the resonance, such as
collapse or a reduced spatial overlap of the mixture, and we accurately locate
the resonance position and width. Understanding and controlling instabilities
in this mixture opens the way to a variety of applications, including formation
of heteronuclear molecular quantum gases.Comment: 5 Page
39-K Bose-Einstein condensate with tunable interactions
We produce a Bose-Einstein condensate of 39-K atoms. Condensation of this
species with naturally small and negative scattering length is achieved by a
combination of sympathetic cooling with 87-Rb and direct evaporation,
exploiting the magnetic tuning of both inter- and intra-species interactions at
Feshbach resonances. We explore tunability of the self-interactions by studying
the expansion and the stability of the condensate. We find that a 39-K
condensate is interesting for future experiments requiring a weakly interacting
Bose gas.Comment: 5 page
Exploring the ferromagnetic behaviour of a repulsive Fermi gas via spin dynamics
Ferromagnetism is a manifestation of strong repulsive interactions between
itinerant fermions in condensed matter. Whether short-ranged repulsion alone is
sufficient to stabilize ferromagnetic correlations in the absence of other
effects, like peculiar band dispersions or orbital couplings, is however
unclear. Here, we investigate ferromagnetism in the minimal framework of an
ultracold Fermi gas with short-range repulsive interactions tuned via a
Feshbach resonance. While fermion pairing characterises the ground state, our
experiments provide signatures suggestive of a metastable Stoner-like
ferromagnetic phase supported by strong repulsion in excited scattering states.
We probe the collective spin response of a two-spin mixture engineered in a
magnetic domain-wall-like configuration, and reveal a substantial increase of
spin susceptibility while approaching a critical repulsion strength. Beyond
this value, we observe the emergence of a time-window of domain immiscibility,
indicating the metastability of the initial ferromagnetic state. Our findings
establish an important connection between dynamical and equilibrium properties
of strongly-correlated Fermi gases, pointing to the existence of a
ferromagnetic instability.Comment: 8 + 17 pages, 4 + 8 figures, 44 + 19 reference
Efficient all-optical production of large Li quantum gases using D gray-molasses cooling
We use a gray molasses operating on the D atomic transition to produce
degenerate quantum gases of Li with a large number of atoms. This
sub-Doppler cooling phase allows us to lower the initial temperature of 10
atoms from 500 to 40 K in 2 ms. We observe that D cooling remains
effective into a high-intensity infrared dipole trap where two-state mixtures
are evaporated to reach the degenerate regime. We produce molecular
Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 510 molecules and
weakly-interacting degenerate Fermi gases of 10 atoms at
with a typical experimental duty cycle of 11 seconds.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Feshbach resonances in ultracold K(39)
We discover several magnetic Feshbach resonances in collisions of ultracold
K(39) atoms, by studying atom losses and molecule formation. Accurate
determination of the magnetic-field resonance locations allows us to optimize a
quantum collision model for potassium isotopes. We employ the model to predict
the magnetic-field dependence of scattering lengths and of near-threshold
molecular levels. Our findings will be useful to plan future experiments on
ultracold potassium atoms and molecules.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
A note on the testing of a Monte Carlo procedure for evaluating multiple-scattering effects on lidar returns from clouds
A Monte Carlo code for calculating lidar returns from clouds in regime of multiple scattering is tested, by comparing its results pertaining to second order of
scattering with those obtained by using an analytic formula developed in a completely different way. For obtaining second order of scattering all the essential parts of the
Monte Carlo code are employed. Thus the very good agreement between the results of the two procedures, which have been found in a series of different situations of scattering
media, has to be considered as a positive test of the Monte Carlo code reliability
Connecting dissipation and phase slips in a Josephson junction between fermionic superfluids
We study the emergence of dissipation in an atomic Josephson junction between
weakly-coupled superfluid Fermi gases. We find that vortex-induced phase
slippage is the dominant microscopic source of dissipation across the BEC-BCS
crossover. We explore different dynamical regimes by tuning the bias chemical
potential between the two superfluid reservoirs. For small excitations, we
observe dissipation and phase coherence to coexist, with a resistive current
followed by well-defined Josephson oscillations. We link the junction transport
properties to the phase-slippage mechanism, finding that vortex nucleation is
primarily responsible for the observed trends of conductance and critical
current. For large excitations, we observe the irreversible loss of coherence
between the two superfluids, and transport cannot be described only within an
uncorrelated phase-slip picture. Our findings open new directions for
investigating the interplay between dissipative and superfluid transport in
strongly correlated Fermi systems, and general concepts in out-of-equlibrium
quantum systems.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures + Supplemental Materia
Tunneling transport of unitary fermions across the superfluid transition
We investigate the transport of a Fermi gas with unitarity-limited interactions across the superfluid phase transition, probing its response to a direct current (dc) drive through a tunnel junction. As the superfluid critical temperature is crossed from below, we observe the evolution from a highly nonlinear to an Ohmic conduction characteristic, associated with the critical breakdown of the Josephson dc current induced by pair condensate depletion. Moreover, we reveal a large and dominant anomalous contribution to resistive currents, which reaches its maximum at the lowest attained temperature, fostered by the tunnel coupling between the condensate and phononic Bogoliubov-Anderson excitations. Increasing the temperature, while the zeroing of supercurrents marks the transition to the normal phase, the conductance drops considerably but remains much larger than that of a normal, uncorrelated Fermi gas tunneling through the same junction. We attribute such enhanced transport to incoherent tunneling of sound modes, which remain weakly damped in the collisional hydrodynamic fluid of unpaired fermions at unitarity
Observation of subdiffusion of a disordered interacting system
We study the transport dynamics of matter-waves in the presence of disorder
and nonlinearity. An atomic Bose-Einstein condensate that is localized in a
quasiperiodic lattice in the absence of atom-atom interaction shows instead a
slow expansion with a subdiffusive behavior when a controlled repulsive
interaction is added. The measured features of the subdiffusion are compared to
numerical simulations and a heuristic model. The observations confirm the
nature of subdiffusion as interaction-assisted hopping between localized states
and highlight a role of the spatial correlation of the disorder.Comment: 8 pages, to be published on Physical Review Letter
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