Caleb A. Christensen

Itinerant Ferromagnetism in a Fermi Gas of Ultracold Atoms

Cold Atom Magnetism Magnetic ordering arises from the strong interactions between atoms, with its origins deeply rooted in quantum mechanics. How the ordering comes about, however, has long been a topic of debate because most condensed-matter systems are limited by a somewhat fixed parameter space. Cold atom systems, by comparison, provide the ability to tune the magnitude and sign of the atom-atom interaction, as well as the density. Jo et al. (p. 1521; see the Perspective by Zwerger) exploit this flexibility to use an ensemble of ultracold fermionic atoms as a “quantum simulator” to explore the possibility of magnetic ordering. As the repulsive interaction between atoms is increased, an instability occurs in the free two-component Fermi gas (or jellium), which results in a phase transition and the ferromagnetic ordering of the atoms. Ferromagnetic ordering forms spontaneously in an ensemble of ultracold fermionic atoms. Can a gas of spin-up and spin-down fermions become ferromagnetic because of repulsive interactions? We addressed this question, for which there is not yet a definitive theoretical answer, in an experiment with an ultracold two-component Fermi gas. The observation of nonmonotonic behavior of lifetime, kinetic energy, and size for increasing repulsive interactions provides strong evidence for a phase transition to a ferromagnetic state. Our observations imply that itinerant ferromagnetism of delocalized fermions is possible without lattice and band structure, and our data validate the most basic model for ferromagnetism introduced by Stoner.

Phase Sensitive Recombination of Two Bose-Einstein Condensates on an Atom Chip

The recombination of two split Bose-Einstein condensates on an atom chip is shown to result in heating which depends on the relative phase of the two condensates. This heating reduces the number of condensate atoms between 10% and 40% and provides a robust way to read out the phase of an atom interferometer without the need for ballistic expansion. The heating may be caused by the dissipation of dark solitons created during the merging of the condensates.

Matter-Wave Interferometry with Phase Fluctuating Bose-Einstein Condensates

Elongated Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) exhibit strong spatial phase fluctuations even well below the BEC transition temperature. We demonstrate that atom interferometers using such condensates are robust against phase fluctuations; i.e., the relative phase of the split condensate is reproducible despite axial phase fluctuations. However, larger phase fluctuations limit the coherence time, especially in the presence of some asymmetries in the two wells of the interferometer.

Trapping of ultracold atoms in a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

Ultracold sodium atoms have been trapped inside a hollow-core optical fiber. The atoms are transferred from a free-space optical dipole trap into a trap formed by a red-detuned Gaussian light mode confined to the core of the fiber. We show that at least 5% of the atoms held initially in the free-space trap can be loaded into the core of the fiber and retrieved outside.

Formation of ultracold fermionic NaLi Feshbach molecules

We describe the formation of fermionic NaLi Feshbach molecules from an ultracold mixture of bosonic 23Na and fermionic 6Li. Precise magnetic field sweeps across a narrow Feshbach resonance at 745 G result in a molecule conversion fraction of 5% for our experimental densities and temperatures, corresponding to a molecule number of 5*10^4. The observed molecular decay ifetime is 1.3 ms after removing free Li and Na atoms from the trap.

Compressibility of an ultracold Fermi gas with repulsive interactions

Fermi gases with repulsive interactions are characterized by measuring their compressibility as a function of interaction strength. The compressibility is obtained from in-trap density distributions monitored by phase contrast imaging. For interaction parameters k_F a > 0.25 fast decay of the gas prevents the observation of equilibrium profiles. For smaller interaction parameters, the results are adequately described by first-order perturbation theory. A novel phase contrast imaging method compensates for dispersive distortions of the images.