Download Mott insulators, Noise correlations and Coherent Spin Dynamics in Optical Lattices

Mott insulators, Noise correlations and Coherent Spin Dynamics in Optical
Lattices
Immanuel Bloch, Fabrice Gerbier, Artur Widera, Simon Fölling, Tatjana Gericke, and Olaf Mandel
Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-University, 55099 Mainz, Germany
Similar to Richard Feynman’s original proposal for a quantum computer as a simulator for the quantum dynamics of other physical systems, neutral atoms in optical lattices already today offer powerful
possibilities for simulating fundamental Hamiltonians of condensed matter physics. In fact, many novel
quantum phases of strongly correlated systems have been proposed for ultracold gases in optical lattices,
however it has been unclear how a large variety of such states could be efficiently detected. We show
that Hanbury Brown-Twiss noise correlation measurements of ultracold quantum gases allow a detection
of many of these quantum states for ultracold Bosonic and fermionic quantum gases. In addition to this,
we report on novel results on the phase coherence properties of an atomic Mott insulator. For finite
lattice depths a coherent admixture of particle/hole pairs exists, which is fundamental to a Mott insulating state. The results have important implications for the use of Mott insulators as quantum registers
for quantum information processing. Finally, we demonstrate fully coherent, purely collisionally driven
spinor dynamics of ultracold Bose gases mixtures in optical lattices. Such self induced spin dynamics can
be efficiently used for the generation of entangled many-body states.
Sorting category: Ad Quantum gases, fluids and solids
Keywords: Mott insulator, Bose-Einstein condensation, optical lattices, noise correlations
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