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2Physics Quote:
"Many of the molecules found by ROSINA DFMS in the coma of comet 67P are compatible with the idea that comets delivered key molecules for prebiotic chemistry throughout the solar system and in particular to the early Earth increasing drastically the concentration of life-related chemicals by impact on a closed water body. The fact that glycine was most probably formed on dust grains in the presolar stage also makes these molecules somehow universal, which means that what happened in the solar system could probably happen elsewhere in the Universe."
-- Kathrin Altwegg and the ROSINA Team

(Read Full Article: "Glycine, an Amino Acid and Other Prebiotic Molecules in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko"
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Sunday, July 19, 2015

A Quantum Gas Microscope for Fermionic Atoms

The Fermi gas microscope group: (from left) graduate students Katherine Lawrence and Melih Okan, postdoc Thomas Lompe, graduate student Matt Nichols, Professor Martin Zwierlein, and graduate student Lawrence Cheuk. Photo credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT.

Authors: Lawrence Cheuk and Martin Zwierlein

Affiliation: 
Department of Physics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Link to Ultracold Quantum Gases Group >>

What do electrons, protons, neutrons and even quarks have in common? They all are fermions, particles with half-integer spin. Unlike their bosonic counterparts, integer spin particles, fermions cannot occupy one and the same quantum state. This simple fact leads to the structure of our elements, where electrons have to avoid each other and occupy different orbits around the atomic nucleus, or at least differ in their spin orientation.

When many fermions interact strongly with each other, they can form complex matter with exotic properties, from atomic nuclei to solid state materials, to distant neutron stars. Their collective behavior leads to diverse phenomena such as the structure of the elements, high-temperature superconductivity and colossal magneto-resistance.

Yet our understanding of strongly-interacting Fermi systems is limited. In recent years, ultracold atomic Fermi gases have emerged as a pristine platform to study many-fermion systems. In particular, fermionic atoms trapped in an optical lattice formed by standing waves of light can simulate the physics of electrons in a crystalline solid, shedding light on novel physical phenomena in materials with strong electron correlations.

Yet our understanding of strongly-interacting Fermi systems is limited. In recent years, ultracold atomic Fermi gases have emerged as a pristine platform to study many-fermion systems. In particular, fermionic atoms trapped in an optical lattice formed by standing waves of light can simulate the physics of electrons in a crystalline solid, shedding light on novel physical phenomena in materials with strong electron correlations.

In the present work, recently published in Physical Review Letters [3], we have realized quantum gas microscope that images ultracold fermionic 40K atoms with single-lattice-site resolution. Similar results have also been achieved at about the same time by researchers at University of Strathclyde and Harvard University [4,5].
Figure Caption: Fermionic 40K atoms in a 2D optical lattice with 541nm spacing imaged using Raman sideband cooling. Image taken from [3].

In our experiment, we prepare a two-dimensional layer of 40K atoms via laser cooling and forced evaporation. The atoms are then trapped in an optical lattice formed by retro-reflected laser beams, which form a standing wave with 541nm spacing. In order to resolve atoms with single-lattice-site resolution, we utilize a novel setup that incorporates a solid immersion lens into the vacuum window. This allows an enhancement in the numerical aperture, leading to higher resolution and enhanced light collection. In addition, optical aberrations that arise from a planar window are minimized in this setup.

In order to detect the atoms, we perform fluorescence imaging while simultaneously cooling the atoms. To make the atoms fluoresce, they are illuminated with near-resonant light. However, as the atoms emit photons, they experience heating from the recoil of photons. As the atoms are heated up, they hop between lattice sites and can even hop out of the lattice. In order to faithfully measure the occupation of the lattice sites, one must therefore eliminate the heating that arises when atoms fluoresce. We accomplish this via a technique known as Raman sideband cooling.

Raman sideband cooling, a technique first demonstrated in the 1990s, selectively transfers atoms from high-energy states to lower energy states via a two-photon Raman process. Atoms that are already in the lowest energy state, however, remain “dark” to the Raman light. By collecting photons that are scattered during this cooling process, we extract the position of the atoms while cooling the atoms. Hopping and atom loss are thus avoided. Furthermore, we have found that even after imaging the atoms with Raman sideband cooling, the atoms are predominantly in the lowest energy state. This invites the possibility of assembling low-entropy many-fermion states atom by atom.

The advent of fermion microscope will allow new studies of many-fermion systems in optical lattices, such as measurement of high order correlations and detection of magnetic ordering. Such studies could shed light on the behavior of other fermions, in particular, electrons. This may one day advance our understanding of the diverse phenomena that arise in complex solid-state systems.

References:
[1] Waseem S. Bakr, Jonathon I. Gillen, Amy Peng, Simon Fölling, Markus Greiner, "A quantum gas microscope for detecting single atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice", Nature, 462, 74 (2009). Abstract.
[2] Jacob F. Sherson, Christof Weitenberg, Manuel Endres, Marc Cheneau, Immanuel Bloch, Stefan Kuhr, "Single-atom-resolved fluorescence imaging of an atomic Mott insulator", Nature, 467, 68 (2010). Abstract.
[3] Lawrence W. Cheuk, Matthew A. Nichols, Melih Okan, Thomas Gersdorf, Vinay V. Ramasesh, Waseem S. Bakr, Thomas Lompe, Martin W. Zwierlein, "Quantum-Gas Microscope for Fermionic Atoms", Physical Review Letters, 114, 193001 (2015). Abstract.
[4] Maxwell F. Parsons, Florian Huber, Anton Mazurenko, Christie S. Chiu, Widagdo Setiawan, Katherine Wooley-Brown, Sebastian Blatt, Markus Greiner, "Site-Resolved Imaging of Fermionic 6Li in an Optical Lattice", Physical Review Letters, 114, 213002 (2015). Abstract.
[5] Elmar Haller, James Hudson, Andrew Kelly, Dylan A. Cotta, Bruno Peaudecerf, Graham D. Bruce, Stefan Kuhr, "Single-atom imaging of fermions in a quantum-gas microscope", arXiv:1503.02005v2 [cond-mat.quant-gas] (2015).

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