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arXiv:2503.01402 · Physical Review Research

Shortcuts to adiabaticity for loading an ultracold Fermi gas into higher orbital bands of one-dimensional optical lattice

Hang Yu, Haoyi Zhang, Qinxuan Peng, Liao Sun, Bolong Jiao, Jiaming Li, Le Luo

Published Nov 12, 2025• 0 citations

Abstract

We present a shortcuts-to-adiabaticity protocol to load a spin-polarized ultracold Fermi gas from the ground ( s ) band into the first excited ( p ) band of a one-dimensional optical lattice. In contrast to a Bose-Einstein condensate in a shallow lattice—whose narrow quasimomentum distribution admits uniform lattice modulation—a noninteracting Fermi gas occupies the entire first Brillouin zone, rendering high-efficiency transfer across all momentum classes exceptionally challenging. To address this, we cast the loading process as a global, multiparameter optimization problem: We jointly optimize the timing of lattice-depth pulses and the corresponding phase shifts to maximize the ensemble-averaged transfer fidelity over all quasimomentum states. We demonstrate that fine phase tuning dramatically enhances loading efficiency, though the mean fidelity systematically decreases as more quasimomentum modes are occupied. Finally, we benchmark our shortcuts-to-adiabaticity protocol against established high-band-loading methods, underscoring its minimal hardware requirements and submillisecond timescales. Our work provides a practical path for rapid, high-fidelity preparation of Fermi gases in excited lattice orbitals, opening avenues for exploring orbital dynamics, anisotropic interactions, and many-body phenomena.

DOI: 10.1103/pfc9-7591

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We present a shortcuts-to-adiabaticity protocol to load a spin-polarized ultracold Fermi gas from the ground ( s ) band into the first excited ( p ) band of a one-dimensional optical lattice. In contrast to a Bose-Einstein condensate in a shallow lattice—whose narrow quasimomentum distribution admits uniform lattice modulation—a noninteracting Fermi gas occupies the entire first Brillouin zone, rendering high-efficiency transfer across all momentum classes exceptionally challenging. To address this, we cast the loading process as a global, multiparameter optimization problem: We jointly optimize the timing of lattice-depth pulses and the corresponding phase shifts to maximize the ensemble-averaged transfer fidelity over all quasimomentum states. We demonstrate that fine phase tuning dramatically enhances loading efficiency, though the mean fidelity systematically decreases as more quasimomentum modes are occupied. Finally, we benchmark our shortcuts-to-adiabaticity protocol against established high-band-loading methods, underscoring its minimal hardware requirements and submillisecond timescales. Our work provides a practical path for rapid, high-fidelity preparation of Fermi gases in excited lattice orbitals, opening avenues for exploring orbital dynamics, anisotropic interactions, and many-body phenomena.

We present an effective and fast (few microseconds) procedure for transferring a Bose–Einstein condensate from the ground state in a harmonic trap into the desired bands of an optical lattice. Our shortcut method is a designed pulse sequence where the time duration and the interval in each step are fully optimized in order to maximize robustness and fidelity of the final state with respect to the target state. The atoms can be prepared in a single band with even or odd parity, and superposition states of different bands can be prepared and manipulated. Furthermore, we extend this idea to the case of two-dimensional or three-dimensional optical lattices where the energies of excited states are degenerate. We experimentally demonstrate various examples and show very good agreement with the theoretical model. Efficient shortcut methods will find applications in the preparation of quantum systems, in quantum information processing, in precise measurement and as a starting point to investigate dynamics in excited bands.

We report the long-time nonlinear dynamical evolution of ultracold atomic gases in the

P

band of an optical lattice. A Bose-Einstein condensate is fast and efficiently loaded into the

P

band at zero quasimomentum with a nonadiabatic shortcut method. For the first 1.5 ms, this momentum state undergoes oscillations due to coherent superposition of different bands, which are followed by oscillations up to 60 ms of a much longer period. Our analysis shows the dephasing from the nonlinear interaction is very conducive to the long-period oscillations induced by the variable force due to the harmonic confinement.

A protocol is proposed for the rapid coherent loading of a Bose-Einstein condensate into the ground state of an optical lattice, without residual excitation associated with the breakdown of adiabaticity. The driving potential required to assist the rapid loading is derived using the fast-forward technique, and generates the ground state in any desired short time. We propose an experimentally feasible loading scheme using a bichromatic lattice potential, which approximates the fast-forward driving potential with high fidelity.

We report the long-time nonlinear dynamical evolution of ultracold atomic gases in the P-band of an optical lattice. A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is fast and efficiently loaded into the Pband at zero quasi-momentum with a non-adiabatic shortcut method. For the first one and half milliseconds, these momentum states undergo oscillations due to coherent superposition of different bands, which are followed by oscillations up to 60ms of a much longer period. Our analysis shows the dephasing from the nonlinear interaction is very conducive to the long-period oscillations induced by the variable force due to the harmonic confinement.

Ultracold ground-state dipolar

^{40}\mathrm{K}

^{87}\mathrm{Rb}

molecules recently have been produced in a loose harmonic trap by employing a magnetic field sweep across a Feshbach resonance followed by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage [K.-K. Ni et al., Science 322, 231 (2008)]. The overall experimental efficiency for molecule formation was around

20%

. We show that the efficiency can be increased to nearly

100%

if one first loads the atomic gases into an optical lattice of the appropriate depth and tunes the interspecies attraction to have exactly one atom of each species at an occupied lattice site. Our proposed scheme provides a large enhancement to the dipolar molecule density, even at relatively high temperatures, and avoids three-body recombination loss by preventing lattice sites from being triply occupied.

We present a scheme for rapidly loading a Bose-Einstein condensate into a single Bloch state of a weak optical lattice at a quasimomentum of $q=\ensuremath{\Elzxh}k.$ Rabi cycling of the Bose-Einstein condensate between momentum states is modified by a phase shift applied to the lattice. By appropriately choosing the magnitude and timing of the phase shift, we demonstrate nearly perfect loading of the lattice ground state, the signature of which is an abrupt halt to the Rabi cycling.