New opportunites for interactions and control with ultracold lanthanides
Abstract
Lanthanide atoms have an unusual electron configuration, with a partially filled shell of orbitals. This leads to a set of characteristic properties that enable enhanced control over ultracold atoms and their interactions: large numbers of optical transitions with widely varying wavelengths and transition strengths, anisotropic interaction properties between atoms and with light, and a large magnetic moment and spin space present in the ground state. These features in turn enable applications ranging from narrow-line laser cooling and spin manipulation to evaporative cooling through universal dipolar scattering, to the observation of a rotonic dispersion relation, self-bound liquid-like droplets stabilized by quantum fluctuations, and supersolid states. In this short review, we describe how the unusual level structure of lanthanide atoms leads to these key features, and provide a brief and necessarily partial overview of experimental progress in this rapidly developing field.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2108.04491,
title = {New opportunites for interactions and control with ultracold lanthanides},
author = {Matthew A. Norcia and Francesca Ferlaino},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.04491},
year = {2021}
}