Measuring pair correlations in Bose and Fermi gases via atom-resolved microscopy

2024/11/13 by Ruixiao Yao, Yao, Ruixiao, Sungjae Chi +9 · 2 voices · 5 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.str-el #physics.atom-ph #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.08780

openalex publication_date 2024/11/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

We demonstrate atom-resolved detection of itinerant bosonic ²³Na and fermionic ⁶Li quantum gases, enabling the direct in situ measurement of interparticle correlations. In contrast to prior work on lattice-trapped gases, here we realize microscopy of quantum gases in the continuum. We reveal Bose-Einstein condensation with single-atom resolution, measure the enhancement of two-particle g⁽²⁾ correlations of thermal bosons, and observe the suppression of g⁽²⁾ for fermions; the Fermi or exchange hole. For strongly interacting Fermi gases confined to two dimensions, we directly observe non-local fermion pairs in the BEC-BCS crossover. We obtain the pairing gap, the pair size, and the short-range contact directly from the pair correlations. In situ thermometry is enabled via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Our technique opens the door to the atom-resolved study of strongly correlated quantum gases of bosons, fermions, and their mixtures.

Cited by

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• The distribution of the moment of inertia for harmonically trapped noninteracting Bosons at finite temperature: large deviations
• Interaction-induced Dimension Reduction for Bound States in Microwave-Shielded Ultracold Molecules
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• Weighted Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method for interacting fermions: An application to ultracold Fermi superfluids

Discussions

• Also amazing to me: The university press release claims that "unlike hair, atoms behave and interact according to the rules of quantum mechanics." I had no idea that my hair violated the laws of physi [bsky, 7 points, 3 comments]
• Preprint arxiv.org/abs/2411.08780 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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