We show that the essential properties of a Feshbach resonance in cold atomic gases can be tuned by dressing the atomic states in different scattering channels through inter-channel couplings. Such a scheme can be readily implemented in the orbital Feshbach resonance of alkaline-earth-metal-like atoms by coupling hyperfine states in the clock-state manifolds. Using
173Yb atoms as an example, we find that both the resonance position and the two-body bound-state energy depend sensitively on the inter-channel coupling strength, which offers control parameters in tuning the inter-atomic interactions. We also demonstrate the dramatic impact of the dressed Feshbach resonance on many-body processes such as the polaron to molecule transition and the BCS-BEC crossover.
This thesis reports on the first observation of optical tuning of interactions in an ultracold atomic gas. To control the elastic interactions, we use optically induced scattering resonances. They are realized by coupling pairs of atoms to a bound molecular state with the help of laser light. In comparison to the well-known magnetic Feshbach resonances, these optical Feshbach resonances allow a very fast switching of interactions in a spatially resolved way. This is because laser light can be switched on and off much faster than magnetic fields and because the light intensity can be spatially structured. Our experiments are performed with a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of Rb atoms, which we produce in our new BEC setup. This apparatus has been constructed in the framework of this thesis and offers excellent optical access to the ultracold atom cloud. To investigate the tunability of atomic interactions with single-frequency laser light, we optically couple pairs of free atoms to an electronically excited molecular state. The coupling is achieved with a laser that is tuned close to the respective free-bound photoassociation transition. By changing the laser detuning we are able to adjust the atomic scattering length to any value between 10 a0 and 190 a0, where a0 denotes the Bohr radius. The atomic scattering length is a single quantity that fully describes ultracold elastic interactions. Since laser induced atom losses restrict the duration of our experiments, Bragg spectroscopy is employed as a fast method to measure the scattering length. We also demonstrate that optical Feshbach resonances can be realized with a two-color Raman coupling scheme. To implement this scheme, a second laser is added that couples the excited molecular state to a weakly bound molecular level in a ground state potential. Tuning the second laser results in a modification of the atomic scattering length similar to the one observed with a single laser. In addition, this scheme allows to control the width of the resonance via the detuning of the first laser. For the one-color and two-color coupling schemes, we investigate how the elastic scattering properties depend on the different available parameters, i.e. the laser detunings and intensities. Our experimental findings can successfully be described with an available theoretical model, which treats ultracold collisions in the presence of laser light. Optical Feshbach resonances have the possibility of becoming a valuable tool for fast switching of interactions. This is of special interest in quantum computation schemes with neutral atoms, where interactions between different atomic qubits need to be controlled.
In the ultracold gases of alkali-earth-metal-like atoms, a new type of Feshbach resonance, i.e., the orbital Feshbach resonance (OFR), has been proposed and experimentally observed in ultracold
173Yb atoms [R. Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 135301 (2015)]. When the OFR of the
173Yb atoms occurs, the energy gap between the open and closed channels is smaller by two orders of magnitude than the van der Waals energy. As a result, quantitative accurate results for the low-energy two-body problems can be obtained via multichannel quantum defect theory (MQDT), which is based on the exact solution of the Schr\"odinger equation with the van der Waals potential. In this paper we use MQDT to calculate the two-atom scattering length, effective range, and binding energy of two-body bound states for the systems with OFR. With these results we further study the clock-transition spectrum for the two-body bound states, which can be used to experimentally measure the binding energy. Our results are helpful for the quantitative theoretical and experimental research for the ultracold gases of alkali-earth-metal-like atoms with OFR.
Optical Feshbach resonances (OFRs) have generated significant experimental interest in recent years. These resonances are promising for many-body physics experiments, yet the practical application of OFRs has been limited. The theory of OFRs has been based on an approximate model that fails in important detuning regimes, and the incomplete theoretical understanding of this effect has hindered OFR experiments. We present the most complete theoretical treatment of OFRs to date, demonstrating important characteristics that must be considered in OFR experiments and comparing OFRs to the well-studied case of magnetic Feshbach resonances. We also present a comprehensive treatment of the approximate OFR model, including a study of the range of validity for this model. Finally, we derive experimentally useful expressions that can be applied to real experimental data to extract important information about the resonance structure of colliding atoms.
Recently, a new type of Feshbach resonance, i.e., orbital Feshbach resonance (OFR), was proposed for the ultracold alkaline-earth-metal--like atoms and was experimentally observed in the ultracold gases of
173Yb atoms. Unlike most of the magnetic Feshbach resonances of ultracold alkali atoms, when the OFR of
173Yb atoms appears, the energy gap between the thresholds of the open channel (OC) and the closed channel (CC) is much smaller than the characteristic energy of the interatomic interaction, i.e., the van der Waals energy. In this paper we study the OFR in systems with a small CC-OC threshold gap. We show that in these systems the OFR can be induced by the coupling between the OC and either an isolated bound state of the CC or the scattering states of the CC. Moreover, we also show that in each case the two-channel Huang-Yang pesudopotential is always applicable for the approximate calculation of the low-energy scattering amplitude. Our results imply that in the two-channel theoretical calculations for these systems it is appropriate to take into account the contributions from the scattering states of the CC.
Ultracold gases of fermionic alkaline-earth(-like) atoms are hopeful candidates for the quantum simulation of many-body physics induced by magnetic impurities (e.g., the Kondo physics), because there are spin-exchange interactions (SEIs) between two atoms in the electronic ground (
1S0) and metastable (
3P) state, respectively. Nevertheless, this SEI cannot be tuned via magnetic Feshbach resonance. In this paper, we propose three methods to control the SEI between one atom in the
1S0 state and another atom in the
3P2 states or $^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{0}$ dressed states, with one or two laser beams. These methods are based on the spin-dependent ac-Stark shifts of the
3P2 states or the $^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{0}$ Raman coupling. We show that due to the structure of alkaline-earth (like) atoms, the heating effects induced by the laser beams of our methods are very weak. For instance, for ultracold Yb atoms, ac-Stark-shift difference of variant spin states of the
3P2(F=3/2) level, or the strength of the $^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{0}$ Raman coupling, could be of the order of $(2\ensuremath{\pi})\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{MHz}$, while the heating rate (photon scattering rate) is only of the order of Hz. As a result, the Feshbach resonances, with which one can efficiently control the SEI by changing the laser intensity, may be induced by the laser beams with a low-enough heating rate, even if the scattering lengths of the bare interatomic interaction are so small that they are comparable with the length scale associated with the van der Waals interaction.