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Spin-Nematic Squeezing in a Quantum Gas

Christopher D. Hamley, Corey Gerving, Thai M. Hoang, Eva Bookjans, Michael Chapman

Published Nov 7, 2011• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

Exotic types of magnetic order and phases resulting from collective behaviour of quantum spins are an important focus of many-body physics. Nematic or quadrupolar ordering of spins is one such example [1], which breaks O(3) rotational symmetry, has no magnetic moment and is analogous to the well-known ordering of molecules in nematic phases of liquid crystals [2]. Spin nematic phases have been posited for a variety of condensed matter systems including frustrated quantum magnets [3–5], and heavyfermion [6] and iron-based superconductors [7], although they are challenging to detect directly [8]. Spin-1 atomic Bose-Einstein condensates [9– 11] provide a natural system to investigate spinnematic quantum phases with a key advantage that the nematic tensor is directly measurable. Here, we measure spin-nematic fluctuations in a spin-1 condensate following a quench through a nematic to ferromagnetic quantum phase transition and observe quadrature squeezing in the variance of the fluctuations up to −8.3 −0.7 dB (−10.3 −0.9 dB corrected for detection noise) below the standard quantum limit. Previous work in atomic squeezing has employed two-level systems exhibiting SU(2) symmetry on the Bloch sphere [12, 13], while the squeezing observed here is an example of squeezing in an SU(3) system. These results demonstrate spin-nematic dynamics in the quantum regime and could form the basis of a quantum-enhanced magnetometer.

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Spin-nematic squeezing in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate

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The primary study of this thesis is spin-nematic squeezing in a spin-1 condensate. \nThe measurement of spin-nematic squeezing builds on the success of previous experiments of spin-mixing together with advances in low noise atom counting. \nThe major contributions of this thesis are linking theoretical models to experimental results and the development of the intuition and tools to address the squeezed subspaces. \nUnderstanding how spin-nematic squeezing is generated and how to measure it has required a review of several theoretical models of spin-mixing as well as extending these existing models. This extension reveals that the squeezing is between quadratures of a spin moment and a nematic (quadrapole) moment in abstract subspaces of the SU(3) symmetry group of the spin-1 system. \nThe identification of the subspaces within the SU(3) symmetry allowed the development of techniques using RF and microwave oscillating magnetic fields to manipulate the phase space in order to measure the spin-nematic squeezing. Spin-mixing from a classically meta-stable state, the phase space manipulation, and low noise atom counting form the core of the experiment to measure spin-nematic squeezing. Spin-nematic squeezing is also compared to its quantum optics analogue, two-mode squeezing generated by four-wave mixing. \n \nThe other experimental study in this thesis is performing spin-dependent photo-association spectroscopy. Spin-mixing is known to depend on the difference of the strengths of the scattering channels of the atoms. Optical Feshbach resonances have been shown to be able to alter these scattering lengths but with prohibitive losses of atoms near the resonance. The possibility of using multiple nearby resonances from different scattering channels has been proposed to overcome this limitation. However there was no spectroscopy in the literature which analyzes for the different scattering channels of atoms for the same initial states. Through analysis of the initial atomic states, this thesis studies how the spin state of the atoms affects what photo-association resonances are available to the colliding atoms based on their scattering channel and how this affects the optical Feshbach resonances. From this analysis a prediction is made for the extent of alteration of spin-mixing achievable as well as the impact on the atom loss rate.

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Abstract We propose a simple scheme to realize the persistent spin-nematic squeezing in a spinor Bose–Einstein condensate by rapidly turning-off the external magnetic field at a time that maximal spin-nematic squeezing occurs. We observe that the optimal spin-nematic squeezing can be maintained in a nearly fixed direction. For a proper initial magnetic field, the optimal squeezing can be obviously enhanced. We further construct a spin-mixing interferometer, where the quantum correlation of the squeezed state (generated by our scheme) is fully utilized in the phase measurement, and show the phase sensitivity of the interferometer has a significant enhancement.

Communications in Theoretical Physics•Dec 20, 2021•1 citation
Exotic types of magnetic order and phases resulting from collective behaviour of quantum spins are an important focus of many-body physics. Nematic or quadrupolar ordering of spins is one such example [1], which breaks O(3) rotational symmetry, has no magnetic moment and is analogous to the well-known ordering of molecules in nematic phases of liquid crystals [2]. Spin nematic phases have been posited for a variety of condensed matter systems including frustrated quantum magnets [3–5], and heavyfermion [6] and iron-based superconductors [7], although they are challenging to detect directly [8]. Spin-1 atomic Bose-Einstein condensates [9– 11] provide a natural system to investigate spinnematic quantum phases with a key advantage that the nematic tensor is directly measurable. Here, we measure spin-nematic fluctuations in a spin-1 condensate following a quench through a nematic to ferromagnetic quantum phase transition and observe quadrature squeezing in the variance of the fluctuations up to −8.3 −0.7 dB (−10.3 −0.9 dB corrected for detection noise) below the standard quantum limit. Previous work in atomic squeezing has employed two-level systems exhibiting SU(2) symmetry on the Bloch sphere [12, 13], while the squeezing observed here is an example of squeezing in an SU(3) system. These results demonstrate spin-nematic dynamics in the quantum regime and could form the basis of a quantum-enhanced magnetometer.
Investigations of spin squeezing in ensembles of quantum particles have been limited primarily to a subspace of spin fluctuations and a single spatial mode in high-spin and spatially extended ensembles. Here, we show that a wider range of spin squeezing is attainable in ensembles of high-spin atoms, characterized by sub-quantum-limited fluctuations in several independent planes of spin-fluctuation observables. Further, considering the quantum dynamics of an f =1 ferromagnetic spinor Bose–Einstein condensate, we demonstrate theoretically that a high degree of spin squeezing is attained in multiple spatial modes of a spatially extended quantum field and that such squeezing can be extracted from spatially resolved measurements of magnetization and nematicity, i.e. the vector and quadrupole magnetic moments, of the quantum gas. Taking into account several experimental limitations, we predict that the variance of the atomic magnetization and nematicity may be reduced as far as 20 dB below the standard quantum limits.
The primary study of this thesis is spin-nematic squeezing in a spin-1 condensate. \nThe measurement of spin-nematic squeezing builds on the success of previous experiments of spin-mixing together with advances in low noise atom counting. \nThe major contributions of this thesis are linking theoretical models to experimental results and the development of the intuition and tools to address the squeezed subspaces. \nUnderstanding how spin-nematic squeezing is generated and how to measure it has required a review of several theoretical models of spin-mixing as well as extending these existing models. This extension reveals that the squeezing is between quadratures of a spin moment and a nematic (quadrapole) moment in abstract subspaces of the SU(3) symmetry group of the spin-1 system. \nThe identification of the subspaces within the SU(3) symmetry allowed the development of techniques using RF and microwave oscillating magnetic fields to manipulate the phase space in order to measure the spin-nematic squeezing. Spin-mixing from a classically meta-stable state, the phase space manipulation, and low noise atom counting form the core of the experiment to measure spin-nematic squeezing. Spin-nematic squeezing is also compared to its quantum optics analogue, two-mode squeezing generated by four-wave mixing. \n \nThe other experimental study in this thesis is performing spin-dependent photo-association spectroscopy. Spin-mixing is known to depend on the difference of the strengths of the scattering channels of the atoms. Optical Feshbach resonances have been shown to be able to alter these scattering lengths but with prohibitive losses of atoms near the resonance. The possibility of using multiple nearby resonances from different scattering channels has been proposed to overcome this limitation. However there was no spectroscopy in the literature which analyzes for the different scattering channels of atoms for the same initial states. Through analysis of the initial atomic states, this thesis studies how the spin state of the atoms affects what photo-association resonances are available to the colliding atoms based on their scattering channel and how this affects the optical Feshbach resonances. From this analysis a prediction is made for the extent of alteration of spin-mixing achievable as well as the impact on the atom loss rate.
Large spin systems can exhibit unconventional types of magnetic ordering, different from the ferromagnetic or N\'eel-like antiferromagnetic order commonly found in spin 1/2 systems. Spin-nematic phases, for instance, do not break time-reversal invariance, and their magnetic order parameter is characterized by a second-rank tensor with the symmetry of an ellipsoid. Here we show direct experimental evidence of spin-nematic ordering in a spin 1 Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms with antiferromagnetic interactions. In a mean field description this order is enforced by locking the relative phase between spin components. We reveal this mechanism by studying the spin noise after a spin rotation, which is shown to contain information hidden when looking only at averages. The method should be applicable to high-spin systems in order to reveal complex magnetic phases.
Frustration in quantum spin systems promote a variety of novel quantum phases. An important example is the frustrated spin-1 model on the square lattice with the nearest-neighbor bilinear (J1{J}_{1}J1​) and biquadratic (K1{K}_{1}K1​) interactions. We provide strong evidence for a nematic spin liquid phase in a range of K1/J1{K}_{1}/{J}_{1}K1​/J1​ near the SU(3)-symmetric point (J1=K1{J}_{1}={K}_{1}J1​=K1​), based on the linear flavor-wave theory and extensive density matrix renormalization group calculation. This phase displays no spin dipolar or quadrupolar order, preserves translational symmetry but spontaneously breaks C4{C}_{4}C4​ lattice rotational symmetry, and possesses fluctuations peaked at the wave vector $(\ensuremath{\pi},2\ensuremath{\pi}/3)$. The spin excitation gap drops rapidly with system size and appears to be gapless, and the nematic order is attributed to the dominant $(\ensuremath{\pi},2\ensuremath{\pi}/3)$ fluctuations. Our results provide a novel mechanism for electronic nematic order and, more generally, open up a new avenue to explore frustration-induced exotic ground states.
We study spin-nematic squeezing in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate and use it to probe dynamical quantum phase transitions. We show that the quench dynamics of the spin-nematic squeezing exhibits a nonanalytical change with respect to a final quadratic Zeeman energy, and demonstrate that the squeezing detects not only the ground state phase diagram, but also the excited state quantum phase transition. We further analyze the dynamic stabilization of the system and present its relation to the dynamical quantum phase transitions. Our results are applicable to the spinor condensates with both of the sodium and rubidium atoms.
Abstract We propose a simple scheme to realize the persistent spin-nematic squeezing in a spinor Bose–Einstein condensate by rapidly turning-off the external magnetic field at a time that maximal spin-nematic squeezing occurs. We observe that the optimal spin-nematic squeezing can be maintained in a nearly fixed direction. For a proper initial magnetic field, the optimal squeezing can be obviously enhanced. We further construct a spin-mixing interferometer, where the quantum correlation of the squeezed state (generated by our scheme) is fully utilized in the phase measurement, and show the phase sensitivity of the interferometer has a significant enhancement.