High-frequency broadband laser phase noise cancellation using a delay line

Laser phase noise remains a limiting factor in many experimental settings, including metrology, time-keeping, as well as quantum optics. Hitherto this issue was addressed at low frequencies, ranging from well below 1 Hz to maximally 100 kHz. However, a wide range of experiments, such as, e.g., those involving nanomechanical membrane resonators, are highly sensitive to noise at higher frequencies in the range of 100 kHz to 10 MHz, such as nanomechanical membrane resonators. Here we employ a fiber-loop delay line interferometer optimized to cancel laser phase noise at frequencies around 1.5 MHz. We achieve noise reduction in 300 kHz-wide bands with a peak reduction of more than 10 dB at desired frequencies, reaching phase noise of less than -160 dB (rad$^2$/Hz) with a Ti:Al$_2$O$_3$ laser. These results provide a convenient noise reduction technique to achieve deep ground-state cooling of mechanical motion.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Density-wave ordering in a unitary Fermi gas with photon-mediated interactions

A density wave (DW) is a fundamental type of long-range order in quantum matter tied to self-organization into a crystalline structure. The interplay of DW order with superfluidity can lead to complex scenarios that pose a great challenge to theoretical analysis. In the last decades, tunable quantum Fermi gases have served as model systems for exploring the physics of strongly interacting fermions, including most notably magnetic ordering, pairing and superfluidity, and the crossover from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Here, we realize a Fermi gas featuring both strong, tunable contact interactions and photon-mediated, spatially structured long-range interactions in a transversely driven high-finesse optical cavity. Above a critical long-range interaction strength DW order is stabilized in the system, which we identify via its superradiant light scattering properties. We quantitatively measure the variation of the onset of DW order as the contact interaction is varied across the BCS-BEC crossover, in qualitative agreement with a mean-field theory. The atomic DW susceptibility varies over an order of magnitude upon tuning the strength and the sign of the long-range interactions below the self-ordering threshold, demonstrating independent and simultaneous control over the contact and long-range interactions. Therefore, our experimental setup provides a fully tunable and microscopically controllable platform for the experimental study of the interplay of superfluidity and DW order.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Optomechanical Response of a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas

We study a Fermi gas with strong, tunable interactions dispersively coupled to a high-finesse cavity. Upon probing the system along the cavity axis, we observe a strong optomechanical Kerr nonlinearity originating from the density response of the gas to the intracavity field and measure it as a function of interaction strength. We find that the zero-frequency density response function of the Fermi gas increases by a factor of two from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer to the Bose-Einstein condensate regime. The results are in quantitative agreement with a theory based on operator-product expansion, expressing the density response in terms of universal functions of the interactions, the contact and the internal energy of the gas. This provides an example of a driven-dissipative, strongly correlated system with a strong nonlinear response, opening up perspectives for the sensing of weak perturbations or inducing long-range interactions in Fermi gases