English

Site-resolved imaging of a fermionic Mott insulator

Quantum Gases 2016-03-22 v2

Abstract

The complexity of quantum many-body systems originates from the interplay of strong interactions, quantum statistics, and the large number of quantum-mechanical degrees of freedom. Probing these systems on a microscopic level with single-site resolution offers important insights. Here we report site-resolved imaging of two-component fermionic Mott insulators, metals, and band insulators using ultracold atoms in a square lattice. For strong repulsive interactions we observe two-dimensional Mott insulators containing over 400 atoms. For intermediate interactions, we observe a coexistence of phases. From comparison to theory we find trap-averaged entropies per particle of 1.0kB1.0\,k_{\mathrm{B}}. In the band-insulator we find local entropies as low as 0.5kB0.5\,k_{\mathrm{B}}. Access to local observables will aid the understanding of fermionic many-body systems in regimes inaccessible by modern theoretical methods.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1511.06366,
  title  = {Site-resolved imaging of a fermionic Mott insulator},
  author = {Daniel Greif and Maxwell F. Parsons and Anton Mazurenko and Christie S. Chiu and Sebastian Blatt and Florian Huber and Geoffrey Ji and Markus Greiner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.06366},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

6+7 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:49:51.427Z