Waseem Bakr

A quantum gas microscope for detecting single atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice

Recent years have seen tremendous progress in creating complex atomic many-body quantum systems. One approach is to use macroscopic, effectively thermodynamic ensembles of ultracold atoms to create quantum gases and strongly correlated states of matter, and to analyse the bulk properties of the ensemble. For example, bosonic and fermionic atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice can be used for quantum simulations of solid-state models. The opposite approach is to build up microscopic quantum systems atom-by-atom, with complete control over all degrees of freedom. The atoms or ions act as qubits and allow the realization of quantum gates, with the goal of creating highly controllable quantum information systems. Until now, the macroscopic and microscopic strategies have been fairly disconnected. Here we present a quantum gas ‘microscope’ that bridges the two approaches, realizing a system in which atoms of a macroscopic ensemble are detected individually and a complete set of degrees of freedom for each of them is determined through preparation and measurement. By implementing a high-resolution optical imaging system, single atoms are detected with near-unity fidelity on individual sites of a Hubbard-regime optical lattice. The lattice itself is generated by projecting a holographic mask through the imaging system. It has an arbitrary geometry, chosen to support both strong tunnel coupling between lattice sites and strong on-site confinement. Our approach can be used to directly detect strongly correlated states of matter; in the context of condensed matter simulation, this corresponds to the detection of individual electrons in the simulated crystal. Also, the quantum gas microscope may enable addressing and read-out of large-scale quantum information systems based on ultracold atoms.

Spin-Injection Spectroscopy of a Spin-Orbit Coupled Fermi Gas

The coupling of the spin of electrons to their motional state lies at the heart of recently discovered topological phases of matter. Here we create and detect spin-orbit coupling in an atomic Fermi gas, a highly controllable form of quantum degenerate matter. We directly reveal the spin-orbit gap via spin-injection spectroscopy, which characterizes the energy-momentum dispersion and spin composition of the quantum states. For energies within the spin-orbit gap, the system acts as a spin diode. We also create a spin-orbit coupled lattice and probe its spinful band structure, which features additional spin gaps and a fully gapped spectrum. In the presence of s-wave interactions, such systems should display induced p-wave pairing, topological superfluidity, and Majorana edge states.

Quantum simulation of antiferromagnetic spin chains in an optical lattice

Understanding exotic forms of magnetism in quantum mechanical systems is a central goal of modern condensed matter physics, with implications for systems ranging from high-temperature superconductors to spintronic devices. Simulating magnetic materials in the vicinity of a quantum phase transition is computationally intractable on classical computers, owing to the extreme complexity arising from quantum entanglement between the constituent magnetic spins. Here we use a degenerate Bose gas of rubidium atoms confined in an optical lattice to simulate a chain of interacting quantum Ising spins as they undergo a phase transition. Strong spin interactions are achieved through a site-occupation to pseudo-spin mapping. As we vary a magnetic field, quantum fluctuations drive a phase transition from a paramagnetic phase into an antiferromagnetic phase. In the paramagnetic phase, the interaction between the spins is overwhelmed by the applied field, which aligns the spins. In the antiferromagnetic phase, the interaction dominates and produces staggered magnetic ordering. Magnetic domain formation is observed through both in situ site-resolved imaging and noise correlation measurements. By demonstrating a route to quantum magnetism in an optical lattice, this work should facilitate further investigations of magnetic models using ultracold atoms, thereby improving our understanding of real magnetic materials.

Probing the Superfluid–to–Mott Insulator Transition at the Single-Atom Level

From Superfluid to Mott Insulator One of the most attractive characteristics of cold atomic gases in optical lattices is their ability to simulate condensed-matter systems. The results of these quantum simulations are usually averaged over the atomic ensemble, or course-grained over several lattice sites. Now, Bakr et al. (p. 547, published online 17 June; see the Perspective by DeMarco) provide a single lattice site view onto the transition of a Bose gas of Rb-87 from the superfluid to the Mott-insulating state. Characteristic concentric shells of uniform number density were observed deep in the Mott insulator regime, and probing the local quantum dynamics revealed unexpectedly short time scales. The low-defect Mott structures identified may provide a starting point for quantum magnetism experiments. Imaging of atoms that were optically trapped in lattice sites reveals local dynamics of a quantum phase transition. Quantum gases in optical lattices offer an opportunity to experimentally realize and explore condensed matter models in a clean, tunable system. We used single atom–single lattice site imaging to investigate the Bose-Hubbard model on a microscopic level. Our technique enables space- and time-resolved characterization of the number statistics across the superfluid–Mott insulator quantum phase transition. Site-resolved probing of fluctuations provides us with a sensitive local thermometer, allows us to identify microscopic heterostructures of low-entropy Mott domains, and enables us to measure local quantum dynamics, revealing surprisingly fast transition time scales. Our results may serve as a benchmark for theoretical studies of quantum dynamics, and may guide the engineering of low-entropy phases in a lattice.

Experimental investigation of planar ion traps

Chiaverini et al. [Quantum Inf. Comput. 5, 419 (2005)] recently suggested a linear Paul trap geometry for ion-trap quantum computation that places all of the electrodes in a plane. Such planar ion traps are compatible with modern semiconductor fabrication techniques and can be scaled to make compact, many-zone traps. In this paper we present an experimental realization of planar ion traps using electrodes on a printed circuit board to trap linear chains of tens of charged particles of

Quantum-Gas Microscope for Fermionic Atoms

0.44\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\mu}}\mathrm{m}

Evolution of Fermion Pairing from Three to Two Dimensions

diameter in a vacuum of

Orbital excitation blockade and algorithmic cooling in quantum gases

15\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{Pa}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}({10}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{torr})

Heavy Solitons in a Fermionic Superfluid

. With these traps we address concerns about the low trap depth of planar ion traps and develop control electrode layouts for moving ions between trap zones without facing some of the technical difficulties involved in an atomic ion-trap experiment. Specifically, we use a trap with 36 zones (77 electrodes) arranged in a cross to demonstrate loading from a traditional four-rod linear Paul trap, linear ion movement, splitting and joining of ion chains, and movement of ions through intersections. We further propose an additional dc-biased electrode above the trap which increases the trap depth dramatically, and a planar ion-trap geometry that generates a two-dimensional lattice of point Paul traps.

Photon-Assisted Tunneling in a Biased Strongly Correlated Bose Gas

We realize a quantum-gas microscope for fermionic ^{40}K atoms trapped in an optical lattice, which allows one to probe strongly correlated fermions at the single-atom level. We combine 3D Raman sideband cooling with high-resolution optics to simultaneously cool and image individual atoms with single-lattice-site resolution at a detection fidelity above 95%. The imaging process leaves the atoms predominantly in the 3D motional ground state of their respective lattice sites, inviting the implementation of a Maxwells demon to assemble low-entropy many-body states. Single-site-resolved imaging of fermions enables the direct observation of magnetic order, time-resolved measurements of the spread of particle correlations, and the detection of many-fermion entanglement.