arXiv subjects

M. Köhl

Publications and source records attributed to M. Köhl.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Thermodynamics and density fluctuations in a bilayer Hubbard system of ultracold atoms

We measure the equation of state in a bilayer Hubbard system for different ratios of the two tunnelling amplitudes $t_\perp /t$. From the equation of state we deduce the compressibility and observe its dependency on $t_\perp /t$. Moreover, we infer thermodynamic number fluctuations from the equation of state by employing the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. By comparing the thermodynamic with local density fluctuations, we find that non-local density fluctuations in our bilayer Hubbard system become more prominent for higher $t_\perp /t$ in the low filling regime. To validate our measurements, we compare them to Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of a bilayer Hubbard system with 6$\times$6 lattice sites per layer.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2023

Machine-learning the phase diagram of a strongly-interacting Fermi gas

We determine the phase diagram of strongly correlated fermions in the crossover from Bose-Einstein condensates of molecules (BEC) to Cooper pairs of fermions (BCS) utilizing an artificial neural network. By applying advanced image recognition techniques to the momentum distribution of the fermions, a quantity which has been widely considered as featureless for providing information about the condensed state, we measure the critical temperature and show that it exhibits a maximum on the bosonic side of the crossover. Additionally, we back-analyze the trained neural network and demonstrate that it interprets physically relevant quantities.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2023

Detecting the phase transition in a strongly-interacting Fermi gas by unsupervised machine learning

We study the critical temperature of the superfluid phase transition of strongly-interacting fermions in the crossover regime between a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superconductor and a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of dimers. To this end, we employ the technique of unsupervised machine learning using an autoencoder neural network which we directly apply to time-of-flight images of the fermions. We extract the critical temperature of the phase transition from trend changes in the data distribution revealed in the latent space of the autoencoder bottleneck.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2021

A compact and fast magnetic coil for the interaction manipulation of quantum gases with Feshbach resonances

Cold atom experiments commonly use broad magnetic Feshbach resonances to manipulate the interaction between atoms. In order to induce quantum dynamics by a change of the interaction strength, rapid ($\simμs$) magnetic field changes over several tens of Gauss are required. Here we present a compact design of a coil and its control circuit for a change of the magnetic field up to $36G$ in $3μs$. The setup comprises two concentric solenoids with minimal space requirements, which can be readily added to existing apparatuses. This design makes the observation of non-equilibrium physics with broad Feshbach resonances accessible.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Pair correlations in the attractive Hubbard model

The mechanism of fermionic pairing is the key to understanding various phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity and the pseudogap phase in cuprate materials. We study the pair correlations in the attractive Hubbard model using ultracold fermions in a two-dimensional optical lattice. By combining the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and the compressibility equation of state, we extract the interacting pair correlation functions and deduce a characteristic length scale of pairs as a function of interaction and density filling. At sufficiently low filling and weak on-site interaction, we observe that the pair correlations extend over a few lattice sites even at temperatures above the superfluid transition temperature.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Higgs mode in a strongly interacting fermionic superfluid

Higgs and Goldstone modes are possible collective modes of an order parameter upon spontaneously breaking a continuous symmetry. Whereas the low-energy Goldstone (phase) mode is always stable, additional symmetries are required to prevent the Higgs (amplitude) mode from rapidly decaying into low-energy excitations. In high-energy physics, where the Higgs boson has been found after a decades-long search, the stability is ensured by Lorentz invariance. In the realm of condensed--matter physics, particle--hole symmetry can play this role and a Higgs mode has been observed in weakly-interacting superconductors. However, whether the Higgs mode is also stable for strongly-correlated superconductors in which particle--hole symmetry is not precisely fulfilled or whether this mode becomes overdamped has been subject of numerous discussions. Experimental evidence is still lacking, in particular owing to the difficulty to excite the Higgs mode directly. Here, we observe the Higgs mode in a strongly-interacting superfluid Fermi gas. By inducing a periodic modulation of the amplitude of the superconducting order parameter $Δ$, we observe an excitation resonance at frequency $2Δ/h$. For strong coupling, the peak width broadens and eventually the mode disappears when the Cooper pairs turn into tightly bound dimers signalling the eventual instability of the Higgs mode.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Simulating a Mott insulator using attractive interaction

We study the particle-hole symmetry in the Hubbard model using ultracold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice. We demonstrate the mapping between charge and spin degrees of freedom and, in particular, show the occurrence of a state with "incompressible" magnetisation for attractive interactions. Our results present a novel approach to quantum simulation by giving access to strongly-correlated phases of matter through an experimental mapping to easier detectable observables.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2017

Coherent Manipulation of Spin Correlations in the Hubbard Model

We coherently manipulate spin correlations in a two-component atomic Fermi gas loaded into an optical lattice using spatially and time-resolved Ramsey spectroscopy combined with high-resolution \textit{in situ} imaging. This novel technique allows us not only to imprint spin patterns but also to probe the static magnetic structure factor at arbitrary wave vector, in particular the staggered structure factor. From a measurement along the diagonal of the $1^\mathrm{st}$ Brillouin zone of the optical lattice, we determine the magnetic correlation length and the individual spatial spin correlators. At half filling, the staggered magnetic structure factor serves as a sensitive thermometer for the spin temperature, which we employ to study the thermalization of spin and density degrees of freedom during a slow quench of the lattice depth.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Measuring entropy and mutual information in the two-dimensional Hubbard model

We measure pressure and entropy of ultracold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice for a range of interaction strengths, temperatures and fillings. Our measurements demonstrate that, for low enough temperatures, entropy-rich regions form locally in the metallic phase which are in contact with a Mott-insulating phase featuring lower entropy. In addition, we also measure the reduced density matrix of a single lattice site, and from the comparison between the local and thermodynamic entropies we determine the mutual information between a single lattice site and the rest of the system. For low lattice fillings, we find the mutual information to be independent of interaction strength, however, for half filling we find that strong interactions suppress the correlations between a single site and the rest of the system.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Cavity-induced back-action in Purcell-enhanced photoemission of a single ion in an ultraviolet fiber-cavity

We study the behavior of a single laser-driven trapped ion inside a microscopic optical Fabry-Perot cavity. In particular, we demonstrate a fiber Fabry-Perot cavity operating on the principal $S_{1/2}\to P_{1/2}$ electric dipole transition of an Yb$^+$ ion at $369\,$nm with an atom-ion coupling strength of $g=2π\times 67(1)\,$MHz. We employ the cavity to study the generation of single photons and observe cavity-induced back-action in the Purcell-enhanced emission of photons. Tuning of the amplitude and phase of the back-action allows us to enhance or suppress the total rate of photoemission from the ion-cavity system.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Antiferromagnetic correlations in two-dimensional fermionic Mott-insulating and metallic phases

Near zero temperature, quantum magnetism can non-trivially arise from short-range interactions, but the occurrence of magnetic order depends crucially on the interplay of interactions, lattice geometry, dimensionality and doping. Even though the consequences of this interplay are not yet fully understood, quantum magnetism is believed to be connected to a range of complex phenomena in the solid state, for example, in the context of high-$T_c$ superconductivity and spin liquids in frustrated lattices. Ultracold atomic Fermi gases in optical lattices constitute an experimental system with unrivalled tunability and detection capabilities to explore quantum magnetism by analog quantum simulation. In this work, we study the emergence of antiferromagnetic correlations between ultracold fermionic atoms in two dimensions with decreasing temperature. We determine the magnetic susceptibility of the Hubbard model from simultaneous measurements of the in-situ density of both spin components. At half-filling and strong interactions our data approach the Heisenberg model of localized spins with antiferromagnetic correlations. Moreover, we observe the disappearance of magnetic correlations when the system is doped away from half-filling. Our observation of the dependence of quantum magnetism on doping paves the way for future studies on the emergence of pseudogap and pairing phenomena away from half-filling.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Thermodynamics vs. local density fluctuations in the metal/Mott-insulator crossover

The crossover between a metal and a Mott insulator leads to a localization of fermions from delocalized Bloch states to localized states. We experimentally study this crossover using fermionic atoms in an optical lattice by measuring thermodynamic and local (on--site) density correlations. In the metallic phase at incommensurable filling we observe the violation of the local fluctuation--dissipation theorem indicating that the thermodynamics cannot be explained by local observables. In contrast, in the Mott-insulator we observe the convergence of local and thermodynamic fluctuations indicating the absence of long--range density-density correlations.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Direct photonic coupling of a semiconductor quantum dot and a trapped ion

Coupling individual quantum systems lies at the heart of building scalable quantum networks. Here, we report the first direct photonic coupling between a semiconductor quantum dot and a trapped ion and we demonstrate that single photons generated by a quantum dot controllably change the internal state of an $\textrm{Yb}^+$ ion. We ameliorate the effect of the sixty-fold mismatch of the radiative linewidths with coherent photon generation and a high-finesse fiber-based optical cavity enhancing the coupling between the single photon and the ion. The transfer of information presented here via the classical correlations between the $σ_z$-projection of the quantum-dot spin and the internal state of the ion provides a promising step towards quantum state-transfer in a hybrid photonic network.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Relaxation dynamics of a Fermi gas in an optical superlattice

This paper comprises an experimental and theoretical investigation of the time evolution of a Fermi gas following fast and slow quenches of a one-dimensional optical double-well superlattice potential. We investigate both the local tunneling in the connected double wells and the global dynamics towards a steady state. The local observables in the steady-state resemble those of an equilibrium state, whereas the global properties indicate a strong non-equilibrium situation.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Photon emission and absorption of a single ion coupled to an optical fiber-cavity

We present a light-matter interface which consists of a single $^{174}$Yb$^+$ ion coupled to an optical fiber-cavity. We observe that photons at 935 nm are mainly emitted into the cavity mode and that correlations between the polarization of the photon and the spin state of the ion are preserved despite the intrinsic coupling into a single-mode fiber. Complementary, when a faint coherent light field is injected into the cavity mode we find enhanced and polarization dependent absorption by the ion.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Retrieval of the atomic displacements in the crystal from the coherent x-ray diffraction pattern

We investigate the retrieval of spatially resolved atomic displacements via the phases of the direct(real)-space image reconstructed from the strained crystal's coherent x-ray diffraction pattern. We demonstrate that limiting the spatial variation of the first and second order spatial displacement derivatives improves convergence of the iterative phase retrieval algorithm for displacements reconstructions to the true solution. Our approach is exploited to retrieve the displacement in a periodic array of silicon lines isolated by silicon dioxide filled trenches.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2013

Decoherence of a single-ion qubit immersed in a spin-polarized atomic bath

We report on the immersion of a spin-qubit encoded in a single trapped ion into a spin-polarized neutral atom environment, which possesses both continuous (motional) and discrete (spin) degrees of freedom. The environment offers the possibility of a precise microscopic description, which allows us to understand dynamics and decoherence from first principles. We observe the spin dynamics of the qubit and measure the decoherence times (T1 and T2), which are determined by the spin-exchange interaction as well as by an unexpectedly strong spin-nonconserving coupling mechanism.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

A two-dimensional Fermi liquid with attractive interactions

We realize and study an attractively interacting two-dimensional Fermi liquid. Using momentum resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we measure the self-energy, determine the contact parameter of the short-range interaction potential, and find their dependence on the interaction strength. We successfully compare the measurements to a theoretical analysis, properly taking into account the finite temperature, harmonic trap, and the averaging over several two-dimensional gases with different peak densities.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗