148 research outputs found
Polarons, Dressed Molecules, and Itinerant Ferromagnetism in ultracold Fermi gases
In this review, we discuss the properties of a few impurity atoms immersed in
a gas of ultracold fermions, the so-called Fermi polaron problem. On one side,
this many-body system is appealing because it can be described almost exactly
with simple diagrammatic and/or variational theoretical approaches. On the
other, it provides quantitatively reliable insight into the phase diagram of
strongly interacting population imbalanced quantum mixtures. In particular, we
show that the polaron problem can be applied to study itinerant ferromagnetism,
a long standing problem in quantum mechanics.Comment: Review paper; published version, 48 pages and 23 figure
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Feshbach resonances in the 6Li-40K Fermi-Fermi mixture: Elastic versus inelastic interactions
We present a detailed theoretical and experimental study of Feshbach
resonances in the 6Li-40K mixture. Particular attention is given to the
inelastic scattering properties, which have not been considered before. As an
important example, we thoroughly investigate both elastic and inelastic
scattering properties of a resonance that occurs near 155 G. Our theoretical
predictions based on a coupled channels calculation are found in excellent
agreement with the experimental results. We also present theoretical results on
the molecular state that underlies the 155G resonance, in particular concerning
its lifetime against spontaneous dissociation. We then present a survey of
resonances in the system, fully characterizing the corresponding elastic and
inelastic scattering properties. This provides the essential information to
identify optimum resonances for applications relying on interaction control in
this Fermi-Fermi mixture.Comment: Submitted to EPJD, EuroQUAM special issues "Cold Quantum Matter -
Achievements and Prospects", v2 with updated calibration of magnetic field
(+4mG correction) and updated figures 4 and
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