Ultrafast many-body interferometry of impurities coupled to a Fermi sea

Marko Cetina; Michael Jag; Rianne S Lous; Isabella Fritsche; Jook T M Walraven; Rudolf Grimm; Jesper Levinsen; Meera M Parish; Richard Schmidt; Michael Knap; Eugene Demler

doi:10.1126/science.aaf5134

Ultrafast many-body interferometry of impurities coupled to a Fermi sea

Science. 2016 Oct 7;354(6308):96-99. doi: 10.1126/science.aaf5134.

Authors

Marko Cetina^{1

2}, Michael Jag^{1

2}, Rianne S Lous^{1

2}, Isabella Fritsche^{1

2}, Jook T M Walraven^{1

3}, Rudolf Grimm^{4

2}, Jesper Levinsen⁵, Meera M Parish⁵, Richard Schmidt^{6

7}, Michael Knap⁸, Eugene Demler⁷

Affiliations

¹ Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
² Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
³ Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute, Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, Netherlands.
⁴ Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria. rudolf.grimm@uibk.ac.at.
⁵ School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia.
⁶ Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP), Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
⁷ Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
⁸ Department of Physics, Walter Schottky Institute and Institute for Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich, 85748 Garching, Germany.

PMID: 27846498
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf5134

Abstract

The fastest possible collective response of a quantum many-body system is related to its excitations at the highest possible energy. In condensed matter systems, the time scale for such "ultrafast" processes is typically set by the Fermi energy. Taking advantage of fast and precise control of interactions between ultracold atoms, we observed nonequilibrium dynamics of impurities coupled to an atomic Fermi sea. Our interferometric measurements track the nonperturbative quantum evolution of a fermionic many-body system, revealing in real time the formation dynamics of quasi-particles and the quantum interference between attractive and repulsive states throughout the full depth of the Fermi sea. Ultrafast time-domain methods applied to strongly interacting quantum gases enable the study of the dynamics of quantum matter under extreme nonequilibrium conditions.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Grants and funding

W 1259/FWF_/Austrian Science Fund FWF/Austria