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Strongly Interacting Fermi-Fermi Mixture of $^{161}$Dy and $^{40}$K

Cornelis Ravensbergen, Elisa Soave, Vincent Le Corre, Marian Kreyer, Bo Huang, Emil Kirilov, Rudolf Grimm

Published Sep 8, 2019• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We report on the realization of a Fermi-Fermi mixture of ultracold atoms that combines mass imbalance, tunability, and collisional stability. In an optically trapped sample of $^{161}$Dy and $^{40}$K, we identify a broad Feshbach resonance centered at a magnetic field of 218$\,$G. In the strongly interacting regime, we demonstrate hydrodynamic behavior in the expansion after release from the trap. Lifetime studies on resonance show that the fermionic nature of the system suppresses inelastic few-body processes by several orders of magnitude. The resonant mixture opens up intriguing perspectives for studies on novel states of strongly correlated fermions with mass imbalance.

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Strongly Interacting Fermi-Fermi Mixture of 161^{161}161Dy and 40^{40}40K
We report on the realization of a Fermi-Fermi mixture of ultracold atoms that
combines mass imbalance, tunability, and collisional stability. In an optically
trapped sample of 161^{161}161Dy and 40^{40}40K, we identify a broad Feshbach
resonance centered at a magnetic field of 218 \,G. In the strongly interacting
regime, we demonstrate hydrodynamic behavior in the expansion after release
from the trap. Lifetime studies on resonance show that the fermionic nature of
the system suppresses inelastic few-body processes by several orders of
magnitude. The resonant mixture opens up intriguing perspectives for studies on
novel states of strongly correlated fermions with mass imbalance.
We report on the realization of a Fermi-Fermi mixture of ultracold atoms that combines mass imbalance, tunability, and collisional stability. In an optically trapped sample of ^{161}Dy and ^{40}K, we identify a broad Feshbach resonance centered at a magnetic field of 217 G. Hydrodynamic expansion profiles in the resonant interaction regime reveal a bimodal behavior resulting from mass imbalance. Lifetime studies on resonance show a suppression of inelastic few-body processes by orders of magnitude, which we interpret as a consequence of the fermionic nature of our system. The resonant mixture opens up intriguing perspectives for studies on novel states of strongly correlated fermions with mass imbalance.
Observation of low-field Feshbach resonances between 161^{161}161Dy and 40^{40}40K
We report on the observation of Feshbach resonances at low magnetic field strength (below 10 G) in the Fermi-Fermi mixture of 161^{161}161Dy and 40^{40}40K. We characterize five resonances by measurements of interspecies thermalization rates and molecular binding energies. As a case of particular interest for applications, we consider a resonance near 7.29 G, which combines accurate magnetic tunability and access to the universal regime of interactions with experimental simplicity. We show that lifetimes of a few 100 ms can be achieved for the optically trapped, resonantly interacting mixture. We also demonstrate the hydrodynamic expansion of the mixture in the strongly interacting regime and the formation of DyK Feshbach molecules. Our work opens up new experimental possibilities in view of mass-imbalanced superfluids and related phenomena.
We report on the expansion of an ultracold Fermi-Fermi mixture of (6)Li and (40)K under conditions of strong interactions controlled via an interspecies Feshbach resonance. We study the expansion of the mixture after release from the trap and, in a narrow magnetic-field range, we observe two phenomena related to hydrodynamic behavior. The common inversion of the aspect ratio is found to be accompanied by a collective effect where both species stick together and expand jointly despite of their widely different masses. Our work constitutes a major experimental step for a controlled investigation of the many-body physics of this novel strongly interacting quantum system.
We report the observation of a broad magnetic Feshbach resonance with a large background scattering length in an ultracold fermionic mixture of ^{23}Na^{40}K molecules and ^{40}K atoms, with both species prepared in their lowest hyperfine states. The Feshbach resonance is characterized by measuring resonantly enhanced loss rates and elastic scattering cross sections via cross-species thermalization. The large background scattering length can drive the atom-molecule mixture into the hydrodynamic regime when the magnetic field is far from the resonance. We observe that the center-of-mass motions of the atoms and molecules are phase locked and oscillate with a common frequency due to hydrodynamic drag effects. This broad atom-molecule Feshbach resonance with its large background scattering length opens up a new avenue toward studying strongly interacting fermionic gases with mass imbalance.
Ultracold quantum-gas mixtures of fermionic atoms with resonant control of interactions offer a unique test-bed to explore few- and many-body quantum states with unconventional properties. The emergence of such strongly correlated systems, for instance, symmetry-broken superfluids, is usually accompanied by hydrodynamic collective behavior. Thus experimental progress in this field naturally requires a deep understanding of hydrodynamic regimes. Here, we report on experiments employing a tunable Fermi-Fermi mixture of Dy 161 and K 40 near quantum degeneracy. We investigate the full spectrum of dipole modes across a Feshbach resonance and characterize the crossover from collisionless to deep hydrodynamic behavior in measurements of frequencies and damping rates. We compare our results with a theoretical model that considers the motion of the mass centers of the two species, and we identify the contributions of friction and mean-field interaction. We show that one oscillating mode exists over the whole range of interactions, exhibiting striking changes of frequency and damping in the deep hydrodynamic regime. We observe the second oscillating mode to split into two purely exponential damping modes. One of these exponential modes shows very fast damping, faster than any other relevant timescale, and is largely insensitive to experimental imperfections. It provides an accurate measure for the interspecies drag effect, which generalizes the concept of spin drag explored in other experiments. We finally characterize the interspecies drag in terms of a microscopic friction coefficient, and we discuss its unitarity-limited universal behavior on top of the resonance.
We report on the preparation of a pure ultracold sample of bosonic DyK Feshbach molecules, which are composed of the fermionic isotopes 161Dy and 40K. Employing a magnetic sweep across a resonance located near 7.3 G, we produce up to 5000 molecules at a temperature of about 50 nK. For purification from the remaining atoms, we apply a Stern-Gerlach technique based on magnetic levitation of the molecules in a very weak optical dipole trap. With the trapped molecules we finally reach a high phase-space density of about 0.1. We measure the magnetic field dependence of the molecular binding energy and the magnetic moment, refining our knowledge of the resonance parameters. We also demonstrate a peculiar anisotropic expansion effect observed when the molecules are released from the trap and expand freely in the magnetic levitation field. Moreover, we identify an important lifetime limitation that is imposed by the 1064-nm infrared trap light itself and not by inelastic collisions. The light-induced decay rate is found to be proportional to the trap light intensity and the closed-channel fraction of the Feshbach molecule. These observations suggest a one-photon coupling to electronically excited states to limit the lifetime and point to the prospect of loss suppression by optimizing the wavelength of the trapping light. Our results represent important insights and experimental steps on the way to achieve quantum-degenerate samples of DyK molecules and novel superfluids based on mass-imbalanced fermion mixtures.