Abstract We report on the experimental doping of a 87 Rubidium (Rb) Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) with individual neutral 133 Cesium (Cs) atoms. We discuss the experimental tools and procedures to facilitate Cs-Rb interaction. First, we use degenerate Raman side-band cooling of the impurities to enhance the immersion efficiency for the impurity in the quantum gas. We identify the immersed fraction of Cs impurities from the thermalization of Cs atoms upon impinging on a BEC, where elastic collisions lead to a localization of Cs atoms in the Rb cloud. Second, further enhancement of the immersion probability is obtained by localizing the Cs atoms in a species-selective optical lattice and a subsequent transport into the Rb cloud. Here, impurity-BEC interaction is monitored by position and time-resolved three-body loss of Cs impurities immersed into the BEC. This combination of experimental methods allows for the controlled doping of a BEC with neutral impurity atoms, paving the way to impurity aided probing and coherent impurity-quantum bath interaction.
Abstract We report on the experimental doping of a 87 Rubidium (Rb) Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) with individual neutral 133 Cesium (Cs) atoms. We discuss the experimental tools and procedures to facilitate Cs-Rb interaction. First, we use degenerate Raman side-band cooling of the impurities to enhance the immersion efficiency for the impurity in the quantum gas. We identify the immersed fraction of Cs impurities from the thermalization of Cs atoms upon impinging on a BEC, where elastic collisions lead to a localization of Cs atoms in the Rb cloud. Second, further enhancement of the immersion probability is obtained by localizing the Cs atoms in a species-selective optical lattice and a subsequent transport into the Rb cloud. Here, impurity-BEC interaction is monitored by position and time-resolved three-body loss of Cs impurities immersed into the BEC. This combination of experimental methods allows for the controlled doping of a BEC with neutral impurity atoms, paving the way to impurity aided probing and coherent impurity-quantum bath interaction.
We report on controlled doping of an ultracold Rb gas with single neutral Cs impurity atoms. Elastic two-body collisions lead to a rapid thermalization of the impurity inside the Rb gas, representing the first realization of an ultracold gas doped with a precisely known number of impurity atoms interacting via s-wave collisions. Inelastic interactions are restricted to a single three-body recombination channel in a highly controlled and pure setting, which allows us to determine the Rb-Rb-Cs three-body loss rate with unprecedented precision. Our results pave the way for a coherently interacting hybrid system of individually controllable impurities in a quantum many-body system.
We report on spin dynamics of individual, localized neutral impurities immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Single cesium atoms are transported into a cloud of rubidium atoms and thermalize with the bath, and the ensuing spin exchange between localized impurities with quasispin F_{i}=3 and bath atoms with F_{b}=1 is resolved. Comparing our data to numerical simulations of spin dynamics, we find that, for gas densities in the Bose-Einstein condensate regime, the dynamics is dominated by the condensed fraction of the cloud. We spatially resolve the density overlap of impurities and gas by the spin population of impurities. Finally, we trace the coherence of impurities prepared in a coherent superposition of internal states when coupled to a gas of different densities. For our choice of states, we show that, despite high bath densities and, thus, fast thermalization rates, the impurity coherence is not affected by the bath, realizing a regime of sympathetic cooling while maintaining internal state coherence. Our work paves the way toward the nondestructive probing of quantum many-body systems via localized impurities.
We present an experimental system to study the Bose polaron by immersion of single, well-controllable neutral Cs impurities into a Rb Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We show that, by proper optical traps, independent control over impurity and BEC allows for precision relative positioning of the two sub-systems as well as for dynamical studies and independent read-out. We furthermore estimate that measuring the polaron binding energy of Fröhlich-type Bose polarons in the low and intermediate coupling regime is feasible with our experimental constraints and limitations discussed, and we outline how a parameter regime can be reached to characterize differences between Fröhlich and Bose-polaron in the strong coupling regime.
Quantum dynamics of impurities in a bath of bosons is a long-standing problem in solid-state, plasma, and atomic physics. Recent experimental and theoretical investigations with ultracold atoms have focused on this problem, studying atomic impurities immersed in an atomic Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) and for various relative coupling strengths tuned by the Fano−Feshbach resonance technique. Here, we report extensive numerical simulations on a closely related problem: the collision between a bosonic impurity consisting of a few 41 K atoms and a BEC of 87 Rb atoms in a quasi one-dimensional configuration and under a weak harmonic axial confinement. For small values of the inter-species interaction strength (regardless of its sign), we find that the impurity, which starts from outside the BEC, simply causes the BEC cloud to oscillate back and forth, but the frequency of oscillation depends on the interaction strength. For intermediate couplings, after a few cycles of oscillation the impurity is captured by the BEC, and strongly changes its amplitude of oscillation. In the strong interaction regime, if the inter-species interaction is attractive, a local maximum (bright soliton) in the BEC density occurs where the impurity is trapped; if, instead, the inter-species interaction is repulsive, the impurity is not able to enter the BEC cloud and the reflection coefficient is close to one. However, if the initial displacement of the impurity is increased, the impurity is able to penetrate the cloud, leading to the appearance of a moving hole (dark soliton) in the BEC.
We describe a hybrid vacuum system in which a single ion or a well-defined small number of trapped ions (in our case Ba(+) or Rb(+)) can be immersed into a cloud of ultracold neutral atoms (in our case Rb). This apparatus allows for the study of collisions and interactions between atoms and ions in the ultracold regime. Our setup is a combination of a Bose-Einstein condensation apparatus and a linear Paul trap. The main design feature of the apparatus is to first separate the production locations for the ion and the ultracold atoms and then to bring the two species together. This scheme has advantages in terms of stability and available access to the region where the atom-ion collision experiments are carried out. The ion and the atoms are brought together using a moving one-dimensional optical lattice transport which vertically lifts the atomic sample over a distance of 30 cm from its production chamber into the center of the Paul trap in another chamber. We present techniques to detect and control the relative position between the ion and the atom cloud.
Recent studies on the dynamics of single, neutral impurities immersed in an ultracold gas are reviewed. This paradigmatic model system is realized by the controlled doping of single Caesium atoms into an ultracold Rubidium gas. Interaction between the impurity and the gas in both the motional and internal degrees of freedom is studied for a broad range of bath temperatures in the thermal and quantum‐degenerate regime. Tracing single‐atom diffusion it is found that, even for a granular bath, where the assumption of a continuous medium is not fulfilled, a modified Langevin equation yields excellent predictions for tracer diffusion. Numerical modeling of impurity dynamics in a three‐dimensional superfluid bath shows the emergence of a prethermalized state for intermediate times due to the existence of a superfluid critical momentum, while for lower dimensions the effect of thermal phonons dominates and obstructs the formation of such nonthermal states. Finally, unleashing the quasi‐spin degree of freedom, the authors observe and control spin‐exchange dynamics between individual impurities and the bath. Moreover, a regime of sympathetic impurity cooling is realized, where the internal‐state coherence of the impurity is preserved. In the future, control over the motional and spin‐degree of freedom will enable using individual impurities as thermalized, localized, minimally invasive quantum probes for a quantum fluid.