Observation of Pauli Crystals
Abstract
The Pauli exclusion principle is a fundamental law underpinning the structure of matter. Due to their anti-symmetric wave function, no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. Here, we report on the direct observation of the Pauli principle in a continuous system of up to six particles in the ground state of a two-dimensional harmonic oscillator. To this end, we sample the full many-body wavefunction by applying a single atom resolved imaging scheme in momentum space. We find so-called Pauli crystals as a manifestation of higher order correlations. In contrast to true crystalline phases, these unique high-order density correlations emerge even without any interactions present. Our work lays the foundation for future studies of correlations in strongly interacting systems of many fermions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2005.03929,
title = {Observation of Pauli Crystals},
author = {Marvin Holten and Luca Bayha and Keerthan Subramanian and Carl Heintze and Philipp M. Preiss and Selim Jochim},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.03929},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
10 pages, 8 figures