Giant spin oscillations in an ultracold Fermi sea

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Abstract

Collective behavior in many-body systems is the origin of many fascinating phenomena in nature ranging from swarms of birds and modeling of human behavior to fundamental magnetic properties of solids. We report on the first observation of collective spin dynamics in an ultracold Fermi sea with large spin: We observe long-lived and large-amplitude coherent spin oscillations, driven by local spin interactions. At ultralow temperatures, Pauli blocking stabilizes the collective behavior and the Fermi sea behaves as a single entity in spin space. With increasing temperature, we observe a stronger damping associated with particle-hole excitations. As a striking feature, we find a high-density regime where excited spin configurations are collisionally stabilized.

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Vortices and Superfluidity in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas

W Ketterle, A Schirotzek, M. Zwierlein … (2005)

Quantum-degenerate Fermi gases provide a remarkable opportunity to study strongly interacting fermions. In contrast to other Fermi systems, such as superconductors, neutron stars or the quark-gluon plasma, these gases have low densities and their interactions can be precisely controlled over an enormous range. Here we report observations of vortices in such a gas that provide definitive evidence for superfluidity. By varying the pairing strength between two fermions near a Feshbach resonance, one can explore the crossover from a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid of loosely bound pairs whose size is comparable to, or even larger than, the interparticle spacing. The crossover realizes a novel form of high-T_C superfluidity and it may provide new insight for high-T_C superconductors. Previous experiments with Fermi gases have revealed condensation of fermion pairs. While these and other studies were consistent with predictions assuming superfluidity, the smoking gun for superfluid behavior has been elusive. Our observation of vortex lattices directly displays superfluid flow in a strongly interacting, rotating Fermi gas.

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Metallic and Insulating Phases of Repulsively Interacting Fermions in a 3D Optical Lattice

A Rosch, I. Bloch, U Schneider … (2008)

The fermionic Hubbard model plays a fundamental role in the description of strongly correlated materials. Here we report on the realization of this Hamiltonian using a repulsively interacting spin mixture of ultracold \(^{40}\)K atoms in a 3D optical lattice. We have implemented a new method to directly measure the compressibility of the quantum gas in the trap using in-situ imaging and independent control of external confinement and lattice depth. Together with a comparison to ab-initio Dynamical Mean Field Theory calculations, we show how the system evolves for increasing confinement from a compressible dilute metal over a strongly-interacting Fermi liquid into a band insulating state. For strong interactions, we find evidence for an emergent incompressible Mott insulating phase.

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A Mott insulator of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice

, , … (2010)

In a solid material strong interactions between the electrons can lead to surprising properties. A prime example is the Mott insulator, where the suppression of conductivity is a result of interactions and not the consequence of a filled Bloch band. The proximity to the Mott insulating phase in fermionic systems is the origin for many intriguing phenomena in condensed matter physics, most notably high-temperature superconductivity. Therefore it is highly desirable to use the novel experimental tools developed in atomic physics to access this regime. Indeed, the Hubbard model, which encompasses the essential physics of the Mott insulator, also applies to quantum gases trapped in an optical lattice. However, the Mott insulating regime has so far been reached only with a gas of bosons, lacking the rich and peculiar nature of fermions. Here we report on the formation of a Mott insulator of a repulsively interacting two-component Fermi gas in an optical lattice. It is signalled by three features: a drastic suppression of doubly occupied lattice sites, a strong reduction of the compressibility inferred from the response of double occupancy to atom number increase, and the appearance of a gapped mode in the excitation spectrum. Direct control of the interaction strength allows us to compare the Mott insulating and the non-interacting regime without changing tunnel-coupling or confinement. Our results pave the way for further studies of the Mott insulator, including spin ordering and ultimately the question of d-wave superfluidity.