Unitary p-wave interactions between fermions in an optical lattice

Vijin Venu, Peihang Xu, Mikhail Mamaev, Frank Corapi, Thomas Bilitewski, Jose P. D’Incao, Cora J. Fujiwara (), Ana Maria Rey () and Joseph H. Thywissen ()
Additional contact information
Vijin Venu: University of Toronto
Peihang Xu: University of Toronto
Mikhail Mamaev: University of Colorado
Frank Corapi: University of Toronto
Thomas Bilitewski: University of Colorado
Jose P. D’Incao: University of Colorado
Cora J. Fujiwara: University of Toronto
Ana Maria Rey: University of Colorado
Joseph H. Thywissen: University of Toronto

Nature, 2023, vol. 613, issue 7943, 262-267

Abstract: Abstract Exchange-antisymmetric pair wavefunctions in fermionic systems can give rise to unconventional superconductors and superfluids1–3. The realization of these states in controllable quantum systems, such as ultracold gases, could enable new types of quantum simulations4–8, topological quantum gates9–11 and exotic few-body states12–15. However, p-wave and other antisymmetric interactions are weak in naturally occurring systems16,17, and their enhancement via Feshbach resonances in ultracold systems has been limited by three-body loss18–24. Here we create isolated pairs of spin-polarized fermionic atoms in a multiorbital three-dimensional optical lattice. We spectroscopically measure elastic p-wave interaction energies of strongly interacting pairs of atoms near a magnetic Feshbach resonance. The interaction strengths are widely tunable by the magnetic field and confinement strength, and yet collapse onto a universal curve when rescaled by the harmonic energy and length scales of a single lattice site. The absence of three-body processes enables the observation of elastic unitary p-wave interactions, as well as coherent oscillations between free-atom and interacting-pair states. All observations are compared both to an exact solution using a p-wave pseudopotential and to numerical solutions using an ab initio interaction potential. The understanding and control of on-site p-wave interactions provides a necessary component for the assembly of multiorbital lattice models25,26 and a starting point for investigations of how to protect such systems from three-body recombination in the presence of tunnelling, for instance using Pauli blocking and lattice engineering27,28.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05405-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:613:y:2023:i:7943:d:10.1038_s41586-022-05405-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05405-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().