171 results match your criteria: "MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms[Affiliation]"

Balancing high sensitivity with a broad dynamic range is a fundamental challenge in measurement science, as improving one often compromises the other. While traditional quantum metrology has prioritized enhancing local sensitivity, a large dynamic range is crucial for applications such as atomic clocks, where extended phase interrogation times contribute to wider phase range. In this Letter, we introduce a novel quantum deamplification mechanism that extends dynamic range at a minimal cost of sensitivity.

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Coherent and Incoherent Light Scattering by Single-Atom Wave Packets.

Phys Rev Lett

July 2025

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA; Research Laboratory of Electronics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA; and MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

We study light scattering of atomic wave packets in free space and discuss the results in terms of atom-photon entanglement and which-way information. Using ultracold atoms released from an optical lattice, we realize a Gedanken experiment which interferes single photons scattering off of Heisenberg uncertainty-limited wave packets. We unify the free-space and trapped-atom pictures by measuring the light scattered before and during wave packet expansion and show the coherence properties of the scattered light are independent of the presence of the trap.

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Spin squeezing in a many-body system is a witness for entanglement and can enable measurement sensitivities beyond those achievable by only classical correlations. Here, working with ultracold ^{7}Li atoms in an optical lattice, we demonstrate spin squeezing using short-range contact interactions in both one and three dimensions. In 1D, spin squeezing is shown to be insensitive to density fluctuations caused by holes.

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Measuring Pair Correlations in Bose and Fermi Gases via Atom-Resolved Microscopy.

Phys Rev Lett

May 2025

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

We demonstrate atom-resolved detection of itinerant bosonic ^{23}Na and fermionic ^{6}Li 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.

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We report the first direct in situ observation of density fluctuations on the scale of the thermal de Broglie wavelength in an ultracold gas of bosons. Bunching of ^{87}Rb atoms in a quasi-two-dimensional system is observed by single-atom imaging using a quantum gas microscope. Compared to a classical ensemble, we observe a 30% enhancement of the second-order correlation function.

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Pseudospin Transverse Localization of Light in an Optical Disordered Spin-Glass Phase.

Phys Rev Lett

March 2025

Tel Aviv University, School of Electrical Engineering, Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.

Localization phenomena during transport are typically associated with disordered scalar potentials. Here, we predict a universal pseudospin localization phenomenon driven by a disordered vectorial potential and experimentally observe its onset in an optical analog of a classical disordered spin-glass magnetic phase. In our system, disorder in the second-order nonlinear coupling of a nonlinear photonic crystal causes the idler-signal light beam, representing the pseudospin current, to approach localization in the transverse plane.

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Optical cavities can provide fast and nondestructive readout of individual atomic qubits; however, scaling up to many qubits remains a challenge. Using locally addressed excited-state Stark shifts to tune atoms out of resonance, we realize site-selective hyperfine-state cavity readout across a ten-site array. The state discrimination fidelity is 0.

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Near-field photon entanglement in total angular momentum.

Nature

April 2025

Andrew and Erna Viterbi department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.

Photons can carry angular momentum, which is conventionally attributed to two constituents-spin angular momentum (SAM), which is an intrinsic property related to the polarization, and orbital angular momentum (OAM), which is related to the photon spatial distribution. In paraxial optics, these two forms of angular momentum are separable, such that entanglement can be induced between the SAM and the OAM of a single photon or of different photons in a multi-photon state. In nanophotonic systems, however, the SAM and the OAM of a photon are inseparable, so only the total angular momentum (TAM) serves as a good quantum number.

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According to Noether's theorem, symmetries in a physical system are intertwined with conserved quantities. These symmetries often determine the system topology, which is made ever more complex with increased dimensionality. Quasicrystals have neither translational nor global rotational symmetry, yet they intrinsically inhabit a higher-dimensional space in which symmetry resurfaces.

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Dynamic control and manipulation of near-fields using direct feedback.

Light Sci Appl

October 2024

The Andrew & Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 3200003, Israel.

Shaping and controlling electromagnetic fields at the nanoscale is vital for advancing efficient and compact devices used in optical communications, sensing and metrology, as well as for the exploration of fundamental properties of light-matter interaction and optical nonlinearity. Real-time feedback for active control over light can provide a significant advantage in these endeavors, compensating for ever-changing experimental conditions and inherent or accumulated device flaws. Scanning nearfield microscopy, being slow in essence, cannot provide such a real-time feedback that was thus far possible only by scattering-based microscopy.

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Atomic physics on a 50-nm scale: Realization of a bilayer system of dipolar atoms.

Science

May 2024

MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Controlling ultracold atoms with laser light has greatly advanced quantum science. The wavelength of light sets a typical length scale for most experiments to the order of 500 nanometers (nm) or greater. In this work, we implemented a super-resolution technique that localizes and arranges atoms on a sub-50-nm scale, without any fundamental limit in resolution.

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Considering the unique energy level structure of the one-axis twisting Hamiltonian in combination with standard rotations, we propose the implementation of a rapid adiabatic passage scheme on the Dicke state basis. The method permits to drive Dicke states of the many-atom system into entangled states with maximum quantum Fisher information. The designed states allow us to overcome the classical limit of phase sensitivity in quantum metrology and sensing.

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Suppressing dipolar relaxation in thin layers of dysprosium atoms.

Nat Commun

April 2024

Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.

The dipolar interaction can be attractive or repulsive, depending on the position and orientation of the dipoles. Constraining atoms to a plane with their magnetic moment aligned perpendicularly leads to a largely side-by-side repulsion and generates a dipolar barrier which prevents atoms from approaching each other. We show experimentally and theoretically how this can suppress dipolar relaxation, the dominant loss process in spin mixtures of highly magnetic atoms.

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Thermography of the superfluid transition in a strongly interacting Fermi gas.

Science

February 2024

MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Heat transport can serve as a fingerprint identifying different states of matter. In a normal liquid, a hotspot diffuses, whereas in a superfluid, heat propagates as a wave called "second sound." Direct imaging of heat transport is challenging, and one usually resorts to detecting secondary effects.

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Spin Dynamics Dominated by Resonant Tunneling into Molecular States.

Phys Rev Lett

November 2023

Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA; Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA; and MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Cambridge, 02139 Massachusetts, USA.

Optical lattices and Feshbach resonances are two of the most ubiquitously used tools in atomic physics, allowing for the precise control, discrete confinement, and broad tunability of interacting atomic systems. Using a quantum simulator of lithium-7 atoms in an optical lattice, we investigate Heisenberg spin dynamics near a Feshbach resonance. We find novel resonance features in spin-spin interactions that can be explained only by lattice-induced resonances, which have never been observed before.

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The Hubbard model of attractively interacting fermions provides a paradigmatic setting for fermion pairing. It features a crossover between Bose-Einstein condensation of tightly bound pairs and Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluidity of long-range Cooper pairs, and a "pseudo-gap" region where pairs form above the superfluid critical temperature. We directly observe the nonlocal nature of fermion pairing in a Hubbard lattice gas, using spin- and density-resolved imaging of [Formula: see text]1000 fermionic potassium-40 atoms under a bilayer microscope.

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Improving metrology with quantum scrambling.

Science

June 2023

Department of Physics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Quantum scrambling describes the spreading of information into many degrees of freedom in quantum systems, such that the information is no longer accessible locally but becomes distributed throughout the system. This idea can explain how quantum systems become classical and acquire a finite temperature, or how in black holes the information about the matter falling in is seemingly erased. We probe the exponential scrambling of a multiparticle system near a bistable point in phase space and utilize it for entanglement-enhanced metrology.

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Despite ground-breaking observations of supersolidity in spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates, until now the dynamics of the emerging spatially periodic density modulations has been vastly unexplored. Here, we demonstrate the nonrigidity of the density stripes in such a supersolid condensate and explore their dynamic behavior subject to spin perturbations. We show both analytically in infinite systems and numerically in the presence of a harmonic trap how spin waves affect the supersolid's density profile in the form of crystal waves, inducing oscillations of the periodicity as well as the orientation of the fringes.

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A Feshbach resonance in collisions between triplet ground-state molecules.

Nature

February 2023

MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Collisional resonances are important tools that have been used to modify interactions in ultracold gases, for realizing previously unknown Hamiltonians in quantum simulations, for creating molecules from atomic gases and for controlling chemical reactions. So far, such resonances have been observed for atom-atom collisions, atom-molecule collisions and collisions between Feshbach molecules, which are very weakly bound. Whether such resonances exist for ultracold ground-state molecules has been debated owing to the possibly high density of states and/or rapid decay of the resonant complex.

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Mosaic and non-mosaic protocadherin 19 mutation leads to neuronal hyperexcitability in zebrafish.

Neurobiol Dis

July 2022

Department of Neurology, F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children's Hospital - Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Epilepsy Genetics Program, Department of Neurology, Boston Children's Hospital - Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.; Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, B

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders. The X-linked gene PCDH19 is associated with sporadic and familial epilepsy in humans, typically with early-onset clustering seizures and intellectual disability in females but not in so-called 'carrier' males, suggesting that mosaic PCDH19 expression is required to produce epilepsy. To characterize the role of loss of PCDH19 function in epilepsy, we generated zebrafish with truncating pcdh19 variants.

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Photons think inside the box.

Science

March 2022

MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Light confined to a sheet offers a glimpse into low-dimensional quantum gases.

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Preparation of the Spin-Mott State: A Spinful Mott Insulator of Repulsively Bound Pairs.

Phys Rev Lett

March 2022

Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

We observe and study a special ground state of bosons with two spin states in an optical lattice: the spin-Mott insulator, a state that consists of repulsively bound pairs that is insulating for both spin and charge transport. Because of the pairing gap created by the interaction anisotropy, it can be prepared with low entropy and can serve as a starting point for adiabatic state preparation. We find that the stability of the spin-Mott state depends on the pairing energy, and observe two qualitatively different decay regimes, one of which exhibits protection by the gap.

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Control of reactive collisions by quantum interference.

Science

March 2022

MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

In this study, we achieved magnetic control of reactive scattering in an ultracold mixture of Na atoms and NaLi molecules. In most molecular collisions, particles react or are lost near short range with unity probability, leading to the so-called universal rate. By contrast, the Na + NaLi system was shown to have only ~4% loss probability in a fully spin-polarized state.

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Quantum register of fermion pairs.

Nature

January 2022

Department of Physics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Quantum control of motion is central for modern atomic clocks and interferometers. It enables protocols to process and distribute quantum information, and allows the probing of entanglement in correlated states of matter. However, the motional coherence of individual particles can be fragile to maintain, as external degrees of freedom couple strongly to the environment.

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Crystallization of bosonic quantum Hall states in a rotating quantum gas.

Nature

January 2022

MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

The dominance of interactions over kinetic energy lies at the heart of strongly correlated quantum matter, from fractional quantum Hall liquids, to atoms in optical lattices and twisted bilayer graphene. Crystalline phases often compete with correlated quantum liquids, and transitions between them occur when the energy cost of forming a density wave approaches zero. A prime example occurs for electrons in high-strength magnetic fields, where the instability of quantum Hall liquids towards a Wigner crystal is heralded by a roton-like softening of density modulations at the magnetic length.

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