arXiv subjects

David Clément

Publications and source records attributed to David Clément.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Universal scaling of fluctuations and correlations across the superfluid transition

The critical behavior of a system near a continuous phase transition is commonly characterized by power laws and a set of universal critical exponents. Yet universality at phase transitions has even more fundamental manifestations. It dictates that all observables follow universal scaling functions, which may extend beyond simple power laws. Furthermore, microscopic details are captured entirely by only two system-specific scale factors, that rescale any measured quantity onto its universal form. In this work, we report the experimental validation of this prediction in ultracold lattice Bose gases undergoing the superfluid transition. We extract the scale factors by collapsing the order-parameter cumulants measured at varying entropies. We show that these factors specify scaling functions governing both the order-parameter distribution and two-point correlations. By measuring these scaling functions, we also determine three critical exponents $β$, $γ$ and $ν$. Our results provide an experimental demonstration that universal scaling is simultaneously obeyed by multiple observables in a quantum many-body system.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2026

Observation of universal non-Gaussian statistics of the order parameter across a continuous phase transition

Second-order phase transitions are characterised by critical scaling and universality. The singular behaviour of thermodynamic quantities at the transition, in particular, is determined by critical exponents of the universality class of the transition. However, critical properties are also characterised by the probability distribution of the order parameter across the transition, where non-Gaussian statistics are expected, but remain largely unexplored. Here, making use of single-atom-resolved detection in momentum space, we measure the full probability distribution of the order-parameter amplitude across a continuous phase transition in an interacting lattice Bose gas. We find that fluctuations are captured by an effective potential -- reconstructed from the measured probability distribution by analogy with Landau theory -- displaying a non-trivial minimum in the superfluid (ordered) phase, which vanishes at the transition point. Additionally, we observe non-Gaussian statistics of the order parameter near the transition, distinguished by non-zero high-order cumulants undergoing abrupt sign changes. We show numerically that these sign changes of the cumulants obey critical scaling in homogeneous systems, and that their experimental behaviour is not reproduced by classical models, whereas it is captured by a low-temperature quantum model. Our results underscore the crucial role of order parameter statistics in probing critical phenomena and universality.

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arXiv2025

Connected correlations in cold atom experiments

The recent development of single-atom-resolved probes has made full counting statistics measurements accessible in quantum gas experiments. This capability provides access to high-order moments of physical observables, from which cumulants, or equivalently connected correlations, can be precisely determined. Through a selection of recent cold atom experiments, this article illustrates the significance of connected correlations in characterizing ensembles of interacting quantum particles. First, non-zero connected correlations of order n > 2 unambiguously identify non-Gaussian quantum states. Second, connected correlations of order n identify clusters made of n elements whose statistical properties are irreducible to combinations of smaller clusters. The ability to identify such multi-particle clusters offers a an interesting perspective on strongly correlated quantum states of matter at the microscopic scale.

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arXiv2025

Quantifying two-mode entanglement of bosonic Gaussian states from their full counting statistics

We study the entanglement properties of two-mode bosonic Gaussian states based on their multi-mode counting statistics. We exploit the idea that measuring high-order correlations of particle numbers can reveal entanglement without making any assumptions about the coherence of the fields. We show that the two- and four-body number correlations are sufficient to fully characterize the entanglement of two-mode bosonic Gaussian states for which each mode exhibits a thermal distribution. In addition, we derive an entanglement witness based on two-body correlations alone. Our findings are of great importance because it becomes possible to reveal entanglement in a series of recent experiments.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Suppression of Bogoliubov momentum pairing and emergence of non-Gaussian correlations in ultracold interacting Bose gases

Strongly correlated quantum matter -- such as interacting electron systems or interacting quantum fluids -- possesses properties that cannot be understood in terms of linear fluctuations and free quasi-particles. Quantum fluctuations in these systems are indeed large and generically exhibit non-Gaussian statistics -- a property captured only by inspecting high-order correlations, whose quantitative reconstruction poses a formidable challenge to both experiments and theory alike. A prime example of correlated quantum matter is the strongly interacting Bose fluid, realized by superfluid Helium and, more recently, ultra-cold atoms. Here, we experimentally study interacting Bose gases from the weakly to the strongly interacting regime through single-atom-resolved correlations in momentum space. We observe that the Bogoliubov pairing among modes of opposite momenta, emblematic of the weakly interacting regime, is suppressed as interactions become stronger. This departure from the predictions of Bogoliubov theory signals the onset of the strongly correlated regime, as confirmed by numerical simulations that highlight the role of non-linear quantum fluctuations in our system. Additionally, our measurements unveil a non-zero four-operator cumulant at even stronger interactions, which is a direct signature of non-Gaussian correlations. These results shed light on the emergence and physical origin of non-Gaussian correlations in ensembles of interacting bosons.

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arXiv2024

Tomography of a single-atom-resolved detector in the presence of shot-to-shot number fluctuations

Tomography of single-particle-resolved detectors is of primary importance for characterizing particle correlations with applications in quantum metrology, quantum simulation and quantum computing. However, it is a non-trivial task in practice due to the unavoidable presence of noise that affects the measurement but does not originate from the detector. In this work, we address this problem for a three-dimensional single-atom-resolved detector where shot-to-shot atom number fluctuations are a central issue to perform a quantum detector tomography. We overcome this difficulty by exploiting the parallel measurement of counting statistics in sub-volumes of the detector, from which we evaluate the effect of shot-to-shot fluctuations and perform a local tomography of the detector. In addition, we illustrate the validity of our method from applying it to Gaussian quantum states with different number statistics. Finally, we show that the response of Micro-Channel Plate detectors is well-described from using a binomial distribution with the detection efficiency as a single parameter.

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arXiv2022

Full counting statistics of interacting lattice gases after an expansion: The role of the condensate depletion in the many-body coherence

We study the full counting statistics (FCS) of quantum gases in samples of thousands of interacting bosons, detected atom-by-atom after a long free-fall expansion. In this far-field configuration, the FCS reveals the many-body coherence from which we characterize iconic states of interacting lattice bosons, by deducing the normalized correlations $g^{(n)}(0)$ up to the order $n=6$. In Mott insulators, we find a thermal FCS characterized by perfectly-contrasted correlations $g^{(n)}(0)= n!$. In interacting Bose superfluids, we observe small deviations to the Poisson FCS and to the ideal values $g^{(n)}(0)=1$ expected for a pure condensate. To describe these deviations, we introduce a heuristic model that includes an incoherent contribution attributed to the depletion of the condensate. The predictions of the model agree quantitatively with our measurements over a large range of interaction strengths, that includes the regime where the condensate is strongly depleted by interactions. These results suggest that the condensate component exhibits a full coherence $g^{(n)}(0) =1$ at any order $n$ up to $n=6$ and at arbitrary interaction strengths. The approach demonstrated here is readily extendable to characterize a large variety of interacting quantum states and phase transitions.

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arXiv2022

Observation of $1/k^4$-tails after expansion of Bose-Einstein Condensates with impurities

We measure the momentum density in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with dilute spin impurities after an expansion in the presence of interactions. We observe tails decaying as $1/k^4$ at large momentum $k$ in the condensate and in the impurity cloud. These algebraic tails originate from the impurity-BEC interaction, but their amplitudes greatly exceed those expected from two-body contact interactions at equilibrium in the trap. Furthermore, in the absence of impurities, such algebraic tails are not found in the BEC density measured after the interaction-driven expansion. These results highlight the key role played by impurities when present, a possibility that had not been considered in our previous work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 235303 (2016)]. Our measurements suggest that these unexpected algebraic tails originate from the non-trivial dynamics of the expansion in the presence of impurity-bath interactions.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Fermionic correlation functions from randomized measurements in programmable atomic quantum devices

We provide a measurement protocol to estimate 2- and 4-point fermionic correlations in ultra-cold atom experiments. Our approach is based on combining random atomic beam splitter operations, which can be realized with programmable optical landscapes, with high-resolution imaging systems such as quantum gas microscopes. We illustrate our results in the context of the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm for solving quantum chemistry problems.

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arXiv2022

Observation of pairs of atoms at opposite momenta in an equilibrium interacting Bose gas

Quantum fluctuations play a central role in the properties of quantum matter. In non-interacting ensembles, they manifest as fluctuations of non-commuting observables, quantified by Heisenberg inequalities. In the presence of interactions, additional quantum fluctuations appear, from which many-body correlations and entanglement arise. In the context of many-body physics, the Bogoliubov theory provides us with an illuminating microscopic picture of how this occurs for weakly-interacting bosons, with the appearance of the quantum depletion formed by pairs of bosons with opposite momenta. Here, we report the observation of these atom pairs in the depletion of an equilibrium interacting Bose gas. A quantitative study of atom-atom correlations, both at opposite and close-by momenta, allows us to fully characterise the equilibrium many-body state. We show that the atom pairs share the properties of two-mode squeezed states, including relative number squeezing. Our results illustrate how interacting systems acquire non-trivial quantum correlations as a result of the interplay between quantum fluctuations and interactions

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arXiv2021

Studying the low-entropy Mott transition of bosons in a three-dimensional optical lattice by measuring the full momentum-space density

We report on a combined experimental and theoretical study of the low-entropy Mott transition for interacting bosons trapped in a three-dimensional (3D) cubic lattice -- namely, the interaction-induced superfluid-to-normal phase transition in the vicinity of the zero-temperature Mott transition. Our analysis relies on the measurement of the 3D momentum distribution, which allows us to extract the momentum-space density $ρ({\bf k}={\bf 0})$ at the center of the Brillouin zone. Upon varying the ratio between the interaction $U$ and the tunnelling energy $J$ across the superfluid transition, we observe that $ρ({\bf k}={\bf 0})$ exhibits a sharp transition at a value of $U/J$ consistent with the bulk prediction from quantum Monte Carlo. In addition, the variation of $ρ({\bf k}={\bf 0})$ with $U/J$ exhibits a critical behavior consistent with the expected 3D XY universality class. Our results show that the tomographic reconstruction of the momentum distribution of ultracold bosons can reveal traits of the critical behavior of the superfluid transition even in an inhomogeneous trapped system.

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arXiv2020

Certifying the adiabatic preparation of ultracold lattice bosons in the vicinity of the Mott transition

We present a joint experimental and theoretical analysis to assess the adiabatic experimental preparation of ultracold bosons in optical lattices aimed at simulating the three-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model. Thermometry of lattice gases is realized from the superfluid to the Mott regime by combining the measurement of three-dimensional momentum-space densities with ab-initio quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations of the same quantity. The measured temperatures across the superfluid-to-Mott transition are in agreement with isentropic lines reconstructed via QMC for the experimental parameters of interest, with a conserved entropy per particle of $S/N=0.8(1) k_{B}$. In addition, the Fisher information associated with this thermometry method shows that the latter is most accurate in the critical regime close to the Mott transition, as confirmed in the experiment. These results prove that equilibrium states of the Bose-Hubbard model - including those in the quantum-critical regime above the Mott transition - can be adiabatically prepared in cold-atom apparatus.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Position- and momentum-space two-body correlations in a weakly interacting trapped condensate

We investigate the position- and momentum-space two--body correlations in a weakly interacting, harmonically trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensed gas at low temperatures. The two-body correlations are computed within the Bogoliubov approximation and the peculiarities of the trapped gas are highlighted in contrast to the spatially homogeneous case. In the position space, we recover the anti-bunching induced by the repulsive inter-atomic interaction in the condensed fraction localized around the trap center and the bunching in the outer thermal cloud. In the momentum space, bunching signatures appear for either equal or opposite values of the momentum and display peculiar features as a function of the momentum and the temperature. In analogy to the optical Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, the amplitude of the bunching signal at close-by momenta is fixed by the chaotic nature of the matter field state and its linewidth is shown to be set by the (inverse of the) finite spatial size of the associated in-trap momentum components. In contrast, the linewidth of the bunching signal at opposite-momenta is only determined by the condensate size.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Hanbury-Brown and Twiss bunching of phonons and of the quantum depletion in a strongly-interacting Bose gas

We report the realisation of a Hanbury-Brown and Twiss (HBT)-like experiment with a gas of strongly interacting bosons at low temperatures. The regime of large interactions and low temperatures is reached in a three-dimensional optical lattice and atom-atom correlations are extracted from the detection of individual metastable Helium atoms after a long free-fall. We observe a HBT bunching in the non-condensed fraction of the gas whose properties strongly deviate from the HBT signals expected for non-interacting bosons. In addition, we show that the measured correlations reflect the peculiar quantum statistics of atoms belonging to the quantum depletion and of the Bogoliubov phonons, i.e., of collective excitations of the many-body quantum state. Our results demonstrate that atom-atom correlations provide information about the quantum state of strongly-interacting particles, extending the interest of HBT-like experiments beyond the case of non-interacting particles.

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arXiv2019

Momentum-space atom correlations in a Mott insulator

We report on the investigation of the three-dimensional single-atom-resolved distributions of bosonic Mott insulators in momentum-space. Firstly, we measure the two-body and three-body correlations deep in the Mott regime, finding a perfectly contrasted bunching whose periodicity reproduces the reciprocal lattice. In addition, we show that the two-body correlation length is inversely proportional to the in-trap size of the Mott state with a pre-factor in agreement with the prediction for an incoherent state occupying a uniformly filled lattice. Our findings indicate that the momentum-space correlations of a Mott insulator at small tunnelling is that of a many-body ground-state with Gaussian statistics. Secondly, in the Mott insulating regime with increasing tunnelling, we extract the spectral weight of the quasi-particles from the momentum density profiles. On approaching the transition towards a superfluid, the momentum spread of the spectral weight is found to decrease as a result of the increased mobility of the quasi-particles in the lattice. While the shapes of the observed spectral weight agree with the ones predicted by perturbative many-body calculations, the fitted mobilities are larger than the theoretical ones. This discrepancy is similar to that previously reported on the time-of-flight visibility.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Two-body collisions in the time-of-flight dynamics of lattice Bose superfluids

We investigate two-body collisions occurring during the time-of-flight expansion of interacting three-dimensional lattice Bose superfluids. The number of collisions is extracted from the observed s-wave scattering halos located between the diffraction peaks of the superfluids. These faint halos can be monitored thanks to the large dynamical range in densities associated with detecting individual metastable Helium atoms. We monitor the number of collisions as a function of the total atom number and of the amplitude of the lattice, in a regime where the number of trapped atoms per lattice site is large. In addition, we introduce a classical model of collisions that quantitatively describes the experiment without adjustable parameters. Finally, the present work validates quantitatively the assumption of a ballistic expansion when investigating the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian with a unity occupation of the lattice.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Tan's Contact for Trapped Lieb-Liniger Bosons at Finite Temperature

The universal Tan relations connect a variety of microscopic features of many-body quantum systems with two-body contact interactions to a single quantity, called the contact. The latter has become pivotal in the description of quantum gases.We provide a complete characterization of the Tan contact of the harmonically trapped Lieb-Liniger gas for arbitrary interactions and temperature.Combining thermal Bethe ansatz, local-density approximation, and exact quantum Monte Carlo calculations,we show that the contact is a universal function of only two scaling parameters, and determine the scaling function.We find that the temperature dependence of the contact, or equivalently the interaction dependence of the entropy, displays a maximum. The presence of this maximum provides an unequivocal signature of the crossover to the fermionized regime and it is accessible in current experiments.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Single-atom-resolved probing of lattice gases in momentum space

Measuring the full distribution of individual particles is of fundamental importance to characterize many-body quantum systems through correlation functions at any order. Here we demonstrate the possibility to reconstruct the momentum-space distribution of three-dimensional interacting lattice gases atom-by-atom. This is achieved by detecting individual metastable Helium atoms in the far-field regime of expansion, when released from an optical lattice. We benchmark our technique with Quantum Monte-Carlo calculations, demonstrating the ability to resolve momentum distributions of superfluids occupying $10^5$ lattice sites. It permits a direct measure of the condensed fraction across phase transitions, as we illustrate on the superfluid-to-normal transition. Our single-atom-resolved approach opens a new route to investigate interacting lattice gases through momentum correlations.

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