Erbium Lab


Former Group Members

Ognjen Marković

Postdoc (2021-2023)

Robin Groth

Visiting Student (2020-2021)

Aaron Krahn

Graduate Student (2014-2020)

Furkan Öztürk

Graduate Student (2018-2021)

Anne Hébert

Graduate Student (2014-2021)

Greg Phelps

Graduate Student (2014-2019)

Emily Tiberi

Undergraduate (2017-2018)

Susannah Dickerson

Postdoc (2014-2017)

Erbium offers an exciting opportunity to extend previous work in single-site imaging of quantum gases. Being highly dipolar, Erbium atoms interact via the long-range and anisotropic dipole force which gives rise to new emergent phenomena that do not arise in systems with only short-range interactions. The rich electronic structure of Erbium contains narrow transitions that can be used to create ultra-cold clouds directly via laser cooling. On the other hand, the broad transitions permit the implementation of ultra-fast imaging schemes. Since Erbium has multiple isotopes, there are various possibilities for studying lattice physics with either bosonic or fermionic statistics. With an erbium quantum gas microscope, we plan on studying aspects of magnetism, spin-orbit coupling, and novel phases of matter.

Technologies

A 2D tunable ‘accordion’ lattice is important for having strong dipolar interactions at short lattice spacings and near-perfect imaging fidelities at longer lattice spacings. Our approach uses an interferometrically aligned beamsplitter to create a pair of lattice beams whose phase difference remains constant across its entire aperture. We move the input beam with a galvanometer that changes the beam height without altering its angle. Together, the galvo and beamsplitter allow for the creation of a lattice whose spacing can be changed significantly without any fringe shift.


Progress

We generate a BEC of Erbium atoms with high condensate fraction in an optical dipole trap loaded from a narrow line magneto-optical trap. Thanks to fast evaporative cooling and narrow lines, experimental cycle times are significantly lower than other quantum gas microscopes.


Outlook

The Erbium experiment is well-equipped to study Fermionic, Bosonic, and dipolar physics. Site resolved imaging of dipoles on a lattice combined with long coherence times allows us to study Hubbard model physics enriched by long-range and anisotropic dipolar interactions. Synthetic gauge field physics is another exciting avenue for future work, having narrow transitions to generate Raman couplings and the advantage of low heating rates.

Dipolar quantum solids emerging in a Hubbard quantum simulator
06/2023
arXiv:2306.00888
In quantum mechanical many-body systems, long-range and anisotropic interactions promote rich spatial structure and can lead to quantum frustration, giving rise to a wealth of complex, strongly correlated quantum phases. Long-range interactions play an important role in nature; however, quantum simulations of lattice systems have largely not been able to realize such interactions. A wide range of efforts are underway to explore long-range interacting lattice systems using polar molecules, Rydberg atoms, optical cavities, and magnetic atoms. Here, we realize novel quantum phases in a strongly correlated lattice system with long-range dipolar interactions using ultracold magnetic erbium atoms. As we tune the dipolar interaction to be the dominant energy scale in our system, we observe quantum phase transitions from a superfluid into dipolar quantum solids, which we directly detect using quantum gas microscopy. Controlling the interaction anisotropy by orienting the dipoles enables us to realize a variety of stripe ordered states. Furthermore, by transitioning non-adiabatically through the strongly correlated regime, we observe the emergence of a range of metastable stripe-ordered states. This work demonstrates that novel strongly correlated quantum phases can be realized using long-range dipolar interaction in optical lattices, opening the door to quantum simulations of a wide range of lattice models with long-range and anisotropic interactions.
Sub-second production of a quantum degenerate gas
07/2020
arXiv:2007.10807
Realizing faster experimental cycle times is important for the future of quantum simulation. The cycle time determines how often the many-body wave-function can be sampled, defining the rate at which information is extracted from the quantum simulation. We demonstrate a system which can produce a Bose-Einstein condensate of 8×10^4 168Er atoms with approximately 85% condensate fraction in 800 ms and a degenerate Fermi gas of 167Er in 4 seconds, which are unprecedented times compared to many existing quantum gas experiments. This is accomplished by several novel cooling techniques and a tunable dipole trap. The methods used here for accelerating the production of quantum degenerate gases should be applicable to a variety of atomic species and are promising for expanding the capabilities of quantum simulation.