arXiv subjects

Tristan Rojo

Publications and source records attributed to Tristan Rojo.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Optical Creation of Synthetic Microgravity for Quantum Degenerate Gases

Microgravity environments provide unique opportunities for ultracold-atom experiments by enabling long interrogation times and reduced acceleration-induced dynamics. However, their realization has largely been restricted to specialized facilities such as drop towers, sounding rockets, and space-based laboratories. Here we realize synthetic microgravity for quantum degenerate gases using optically engineered force landscapes that compensate Earth's gravity to the milli-g level while maintaining continuous confinement of the atomic ensemble. These force landscapes are generated by dynamically painted optical dipole potentials and calibrated in situ through Bloch oscillations in a vertical optical lattice, enabling precise control of the residual acceleration. We use this capability to demonstrate matter-wave beam splitting with arm separations of several hundred microns. We further implement a Bloch-band atom interferometer in which interaction-induced dephasing is strongly suppressed through controlled three-dimensional expansion in the synthetic microgravity potential. This reduction of mean-field effects restores near-$\sqrt{N}$ scaling of interferometric sensitivity for large quantum degenerate ensembles. Our results establish a versatile platform for realizing synthetic microgravity with trapped quantum gases in terrestrial laboratories, bringing the advantages of microgravity experiments to continuously operating systems and opening new opportunities for quantum sensing, matter-wave interferometry, and precision measurements.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Cryogenic Optical Lattice Clock with $1.7\times 10^{-20}$ Blackbody Radiation Stark Uncertainty

Controlling the Stark perturbation from ambient thermal radiation is key to advancing the performance of many atomic frequency standards, including state-of-the-art optical lattice clocks (OLCs). We demonstrate a cryogenic OLC that utilizes a dynamically actuated radiation shield to control the perturbation at $1.7\times10^{-20}$ fractional frequency, a factor of $\sim$40 beyond the best OLC to date. Our shield furnishes the atoms with a near-ideal cryogenic blackbody radiation (BBR) environment by rejecting external thermal radiation at the part-per-million level during clock spectroscopy, overcoming a key limitation with previous cryogenic BBR control solutions in OLCs. While the lowest BBR shift uncertainty is realized with cryogenic operation, we further exploit the radiation control that the shield offers over a wide range of temperatures to directly measure and verify the leading BBR Stark dynamic correction coefficient for ytterbium. This independent measurement reduces the literature-combined uncertainty of this coefficient by 30%, thus benefiting state-of-the-art Yb OLCs operated at room temperature. We verify the static BBR coefficient for Yb at the low $10^{-18}$ level.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2023

Many-Body Anderson Metal-Insulator Transition using Kicked Quantum Gases

Understanding the interplay of interactions and disorder in quantum transport poses long-standing scientific challenges, with many-body quantum transport phenomena in high-dimensional disordered systems remaining largely unexplored experimentally. We utilize a momentum space lattice platform using quasi-periodically kicked ultracold atomic gases to experimentally investigate many-body effects on the three-dimensional Anderson metal-insulator transition. We observe interaction-driven sub-diffusion and a divergence of delocalization onset time on approaching the many-body phase boundary. Mean-field numerical simulations are in qualitative agreement with experimental observations.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗