Fluctuations and State Preparation in Quantum
Degenerate Gases of Sodium and Lithiumby

Edward Su
Submitted to the Department of Physics
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree ofDoctor of Philosophy
at theMASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
September 2014
c Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2014. All rights reserved.
○

Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Department of Physics
August 29, 2014

Certified by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Wolfgang Ketterle
John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics
Thesis Supervisor

Accepted by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Krishna Rajagopal
Professor of Physics
Associate Department Head for Education

2

Fluctuations and State Preparation in Quantum Degenerate
Gases of Sodium and Lithiumby
Edward Su
Submitted to the Department of Physics
on August 29, 2014, in partial fulfillment of therequirements for the degree ofDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract
Ultracold atoms enable the precise study of novel systems where the correlations
between particles are strong. These systems can be simple to describe yet impossible
to efficiently simulate on a classical computer; understanding their behavior addresses
fundamental questions in condensed-matter physics.
The first part of this thesis describes measurements of spin and density fluctuations
in degenerate Fermi gases. We begin by presenting a proof-of-principle experimentthat demonstrates how information about atomic fluctuations can be extracted fromexperimental images and used to measure the temperature of a noninteracting system. We then describe a new technique for measuring spin fluctuations that employs
an effect analogous to optical speckle, using it to characterize the pair correlations
in a strongly attractive Fermi gas. Finally, we use the methods we have developed
to characterize the magnetic correlations of a Fermi gas with strong repulsive interactions on the upper branch of a Feshbach resonance, and show that, contrary
to earlier experimental and theoretical predictions, this system does not undergo aferromagnetic phase transition.
The second part describes the development of an apparatus for performing experiments with sodium and lithium in optical lattices. We describe progress towards
the implementation of synthetic magnetic fields in systems of lattice fermions, which
would enable the study of new topological phases. This includes the develoopmentof general precursors such a Bose-Einstein condensate and a stable Mott insulator ofbosons, as well as more specific studies of heating and dynamical instabilities in tilted
and shaken lattices.
Thesis Supervisor: Wolfgang Ketterle
Title: John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics

3

4

Acknowledgments
Without the support of my parents and their fierce commitment to my education
none of this would have been possible.
I would also like to thank my high school physics teacher, Liz Woolard, for startingme out on this journey, and for showing her students what it means to love scienceand teaching. Thanks also to Saijun Wu, who mentored me during my first exposure
to atomic physics. Hopefully one day I will learn to be as patient, and think as deeply.
During my Ph.D. I’ve worked with a collection of the most talented and generous
people I have ever known. Thanks to Christian for supporting my nocturnal lifestyleand for carrying the dive flag; Aviv for building a fantastic machine and for the word
generator fortunes; Ralf for introducing Python to our lab and for showing us how it’sdone on snowboard;Jonathon for a decade of mentorship and for the fantasy footballtips;Yong for the imaging insights and for returning victorious to the CUA;Wujie forbeing a total badass and for figuring out how to stream sports while taking data;Junru
for the eleventh-hour measurements and the awesome photos;Boris for taking over aslithium czar and for making sure I got enough Shostakovich in my diet. It’s been aprivilege and I’ll miss working with all of you.
I’m grateful to Wolfgang for giving our lab both freedom and guidance throughthe good times and the difficult ones. Thank you for the opportunity.
Thanks also to Joanna, Al, and Nancy for making everything work on a daily
basis; to Ariel, Hiro, Thibault, Shannon, and Sheila for being an inspiring AMO
cohort; to Timur, Niki, and Will for putting up with my inability to ever catch thepuck; and to Dean Lee, Lubos Mitas, Markus Greiner, and Mara Prentiss for teachingme.
Finally I would like to thank David Jackson-Hanen and Sarah Evans for theirbuoyant company during the writing. I don’t know what I would have done without
you.

5

6

Contents
1 Introduction

13

1.1

Digression: sign problems and quantum simulation . . . . . . . . . .

14

1.2

Cold atoms as quantum simulators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16

1.3

Thesis outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

172 Fluctuations in Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gases

19

2.1

Fluctuation response theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20

2.2

Fluctuations in an ideal Fermi gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20

2.2.1

Fluctuation in absorption imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21

2.2.2

Rescaling in time of flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

22

2.2.3

Image analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

24

2.2.4

Probe volume considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28

2.2.5

Fluctuations and temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30

2.2.6

Beyond the second moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

Spin fluctuations in an interacting Fermi gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

34

2.3.1

Disperive imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

2.3.2

Speckle imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

2.3.3

Susceptibility and compressibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38

Dynamics of spin fluctuations in a repulsive Fermi gas . . . . . . . . .

42

2.4.1

Stoner instability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43

2.4.2

Spin fluctuations after a rapid quench . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44

2.4.3

Pair formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45

2.3

2.4

7

3 Development of an Apparatus for Sodium and Lithium Optical Lattice Experiments

49

3.1

Na Bose condensate in a plugged quadrupole . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50

3.1.1

Motivation for a plugged trap configuration . . . . . . . . . .

51

3.1.2

Experimental implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51

Optical potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

3.2.1

Optics layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

3.2.2

High power IR considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56

3.2.3

Alignment considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

3.3

Data management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

3.4

Environmental stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

3.5

Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

64

3.2

4 Bose-Einstein Condensates of Sodium in Tilted and Shaken Lattices 67
4.1

Optical dipole potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

4.2

Optical lattices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

4.2.1

Bloch Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

4.2.2

Kapitza-Dirac diffraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69

4.2.3

Wannier basis and tight binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70

Superfluid and Mott insulating phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

4.3.1

Mean-field theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

74

4.3.2

Mott insulator lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

4.3.3

Return of coherence after a rapid quench . . . . . . . . . . . .

76

Tilted lattices and Bloch oscillations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

77

4.4.1

Dynamical instability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

79

4.4.2

Relaxation to zero-momentum mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

4.5

Gauge fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

4.6

Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

84

4.3

4.4

5 Outlook

87

5.1

87

Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8

5.2

Quantum magnetism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

88

5.3

Topology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89

A Suppression of Density Fluctuations in a Quantum Degenerate Fermi
Gas

91

B Speckle imaging of spin fluctuations in a strongly interacting Fermi
gas

101

C Correlations and pair formation in a repulsively interacting Fermi
gas

107

9

10

List of Figures
1-1 Fermion worldlines permuting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16

2-1 Ballistic expansion of an ideal Fermi gas from an atomic trap . . . . .

23

2-2 Clock noise on interline CCDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25

2-3 Decomposition of noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26

2-4 Absorption cross section versus intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

2-5 Blurring of out-of-focus atoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29

2-6 Power spectrum of noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31

2-7 Variance and density images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

2-8 Predicted atom number variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

2-9 Temperature versus time of flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

34

2-10 Temperature versus size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

2-11 Atom number variance for different temperatures . . . . . . . . . . .

36

2-12 Variance of the variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

2-13 Simulation of speckle noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39

2-14 Sample speckle noise image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

40

2-15 Effect of probe detuning on the optical phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

2-16 Susceptibility and compressibility measured with speckle imaging . .

42

2-17 Capacitor ’booster’ box schematic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44

2-18 Energy levels and timing of the quench to strong repulsion . . . . . .

45

2-19 Spin fluctuations after a quench to the strongly repulsive regime . . .

47

2-20 Molecule formation and atom loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

48

3-1 Time-of-flight image of condensate in a plugged trap . . . . . . . . .

53

11

3-2 In-trap image of condensate in a plugged trap . . . . . . . . . . . . .

54

3-3 Temperature versus evaporation time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

3-4 Atom number versus evaporation time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56

3-5 Main experiment table layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

3-6 Top axis breadboard layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

3-7 Stern-Gerlach calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

3-8 Screenshot of Clinamen data management application . . . . . . . . .

62

3-9 Table schema for SQL database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

3-10 Sample temperature log showing large gradients . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

4-1 Band structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70

4-2 Kapitza-Dirac diffraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

4-3 Tunneling rate and interaction strength versus lattice depth . . . . .

73

4-4 Superfluid to Mott insulator phase transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

4-5 Mott insulator lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

76

4-6 Return and loss of coherence after a rapid quench . . . . . . . . . . .

77

4-7 Bloch oscillations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

78

4-8 Sketch of the dynamical instability in momentum space . . . . . . . .

79

4-9 Dynamical instability in a moving lattice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

80

4-10 Relaxation of quasimomentum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

4-11 Quantitative measurement of relaxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

4-12 Spectroscopy of heating in Raman lattice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

86

12

Chapter 1
Introduction

At the heart of low-energy physics are the ways in which complex systems result from
simple rules. Ultracold atoms are, in many ways, simplicity itself – at temperatures
low enough that the details of the interatomic potential become irrelevant, their
behavior can be described as that of ideal quantum particles. By localizing them tothe sites of an optical lattice, one converts their continuous degrees of freedom into
discrete ones and makes things simpler still. This confinement also strengthens theinteractions between particles so that they can no longer be considered independently,
vastly increasing the complexity of the resulting system.
In part because they are so simple, the Hamltonians describing cold atoms in
optical lattices often resemble those used by theorists as qualtitative ’toy’ models ofcondensed-matter systems. For example, applying a deep optical lattice to fermionic
atoms implements the Fermi-Hubbard model, whiich is believed to result in 𝑑-wave
pairing and qualitatively model the behavior of the high-𝑇𝑐 cuprate superconductors.
These experiments can therefore be understood as a sort of quantum simulation,
where one overcomes the difficulty in calculating the time evolution of a quantum
system with a classical computer by modeling it instead with a second, tunable,
quantum system [1, 2].
13

1.1

Digression: sign problems and quantum simulation

Cold-atom implementations of systems that are already well-understood are important in validating methods and building technical foundations for further work. But
since the ultimate value of quantum simulations is based on their ability to realize
systems whose behavior cannot be predicted using computers, we digress briefly toconsider what sort of systems those might be [3, 4] – this material is general knowledge
to theorists, but often unfamiliar to experimentalists.
Suppose we want to use a computer to model a classical system in thermal equilibrium, consisting of N particles each with m degrees of freedom. Then the number Ωof possible states of the system is 𝑚𝑁 , and if we want to calculate a thermal averageof some quantity 𝐴, that is:

⟨𝐴⟩ =

∑︀

𝑐∈Ω

𝐴(𝑐) exp( −𝐸(𝑐)
)
𝑘𝐵 𝑇

∑︀

𝑐∈Ω

exp( −𝐸(𝑐)
)
𝑘𝐵 𝑇

(1.1)

then we must sum over each of the 𝑚𝑁 configurations and it seems that the computational effort is exponential in N.
If this were the end of the story then perhaps there would be a large interest in classical, as well as quantum, simulations; sums of this type are uibiquitous in areas ranging from Bayesian inference [5] to financial engineering. Fortunately, there are Monte
Carlo methods for approximating them in time polynomial in N. By constructing asequence of samples 𝑐1 , 𝑐2 · · · 𝑐𝑀 from Ω with probability 𝑝(𝑐) = exp(−𝐸(𝑐)/𝑘𝐵 𝑇 ), we
can make the approximation
1 ∑︁
⟨𝐴⟩ ≈
𝐴(𝑐𝑖 )
𝑀 𝑖=1
𝑀

(1.2)

√
with errors that scale as 1/ 𝑀 . There exists a large class of methods for generatingthese sequences {𝑐𝑖 }, of which the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is probably the most14

well-known.
So why are quantum systems harder? We might imagine that the problem stems
from the fact that a quantum state consists of, instead of a point 𝑐 in configuration∑︀
space, a real number associated with all of those points, |𝜓⟩ = 𝑐∈Ω 𝛼(𝑐)|𝑐⟩. While

this is true, it does not necessarily imply worse scaling of the computational effort, atleast in the case of thermodynamic observables. These can be written as a trace andexpanded as a discrete path integral in imaginary time, approximating the continuous
one in the limit where the number 𝐾 of timesteps is large:

⟨𝐴⟩ =
𝑍=

∑︁

⟨𝑐1 |1 −𝑐1 ,𝑐2 ···𝑐𝐾 ∈Ω

𝑇 𝑟(𝐴 exp( 𝑘−𝐻))𝐵𝑇
𝑇 𝑟(exp( 𝑘−𝐻
))
𝐵𝑇

𝛽𝐻
𝛽𝐻
𝛽𝐻
|𝑐2 ⟩ · · · ⟨𝑐𝐾−1 |1 −|𝑐𝐾 ⟩⟨𝑐𝐾 |1 −
|𝑐1 ⟩
𝐾
𝐾
𝐾

(1.3)

(1.4)

The resulting sum is over K copies of configuration space: instead of integrating overall possible configurations, we integrate over a set of ’worldlines’, one of which consistsof a configuration at each of K points in imaginary time. In other words, our quantum
system in 𝑑 dimensions is represented as a classical system in (𝑑 + 1), and we canapply the same Monte Carlo techniques employed for ordinary integrals.
There is, however, a major complication: in the quantum setting the weight of theconfiguration is not always positive. For example, if fermion worldlines permute as inFig. 1-1, then that configuration gives a negative contribution to the sum contributing
to Z. The average then becomes a sum over large oscillating terms and the relative
error scales exponentially with 𝑁 and 𝛽.
The upshot is that there are at least two classes of systems where quantum simulation offers the possibility of categorical improvement over what is possible withclassical computers, because the problems in question are NP-hard [4]. The firstconsists of fermions in more than one dimension, which suffer from the above sign
problem. The second consists of non-equilibrium dynamics where the above approachalso fails because the integral must be taken over real, rather than imaginary time.
15

Figure 1-1: Sketch of permuting fermion worldlines, representing hopping in a 2D
system. The vertical axis represents imaginary time. The particles represented byblue and green worldlines change places, and since the particles are identical this term
contributes to the trace. However, this exchange is an odd permutation and the term
enters into the overall sum with a negative sign. In one dimension Pauli exclusion
prevents the fermion worldlines from crossing and hence there is no sign problem.

1.2

Cold atoms as quantum simulators

In the quantum simulation paradigm we typically apply some known (possibly timedependent) Hamiltonian to a system in thermal equilibrium, and then attempt tocharacterize the resulting state. Progress in this field therefore proceeds in two directions: implementing more interesting Hamiltonians (at sufficiently low temperatures
so that their interesting features can be observed), and improving the ability to characterize the resulting states.
At present the main obstacle to preparing interesting states of fermions is that thetemperatures in current experiments are too high. In a system with two spin states
an entropy of ln(2) per particle is sufficient for full spin disorder, so observation of
antiferromagnetic order in the Fermi-Hubbard model, for example, requires an entropy
below that [6]. At the same time, work continues on realization of new Hamiltonians,
with a major source of recent attention coming from progress in the realization ofsynthetic gauge fields [7] and the resulting topological band structures [8].
16The development of state characterization involves building up a diverse array oftools. A few examples include novel RF spectroscopy techniques [9], Bragg scattering
for detecting long range order [10, 11], and measurement of correlations by merging
wells and measuring double occupancies [12]. A major recent development has been
experiments capable of achieving single-site resolution [13, 14]. which allow direct
imaging of atoms and direct measurement of correlation functions.

1.3

Thesis outline

My time as a member of the BEC2 lab bridged two generations of the experimental
apparatus. Work in the old and new machines correspond to an emphasis on state
detection and preparation, respectively.
∙ Chapter 2 describes new techniques for state characterization: measurements ofcorrelations and thermodynamic response functions of fermionic systems using
spin and density fluctuations. These experiments were conducted in the oldapparatus and include a proof-of-principle study of suppressed fluctuations in
non-interacting systems and characterization of strongly attractive and repulsive
systems.
∙ Chapter 3 discusses technical details of the development of the new machine
after its initial construction, including the creation of its first Bose condensates
and the installation of optical traps, imaging, and lattices.
∙ Chapter 4 introduces state preparation in optical lattices, and describes initialefforts to realize different lattice Hamiltonians with bosonic Na. It also discusses
our studies of a dynamical instability present in tilted lattices and progress
towards implementing synthetic magnetic fields.
∙ Chapter 5 presents an outlook for the future of our lab and apparatus

17

18

Chapter 2
Fluctuations in Quantum Degenerate
Fermi Gases
This chapter describes fluctuation experiments performed in the old apparatus on
spin and density fluctuations in bulk Fermi systems [15–19].
Cold atom state characterization tends to be complementary to study of analogous
systems in condensed matter, because the simplest measurements in each case tend
to be very different. In cold atom systems it is simple to measure momentum andquasimomentum distributions by rapidly switching off the trap [20], but it is difficult to perform transport measurements and to characterize thermodynamic response
functions without taking derivatives of noisy signals. The quantities that are hardto measure include some of the most important characteristics of the phases whoseboundaries one would like to map out in quantum simulations: for example, in a gasof Cooper pairs or an antiferromagnetic phase the spin susceptibility vanishes, andfor a ferromagnetic systems it diverges.
With some difficulty, one can measure the response functions and transport properties in direct ways. By precisely characterizing the trapping potential and taking
advantage of cylindrical symmetry, it is possible to accurately take the derivativeof the atom number with respect to the chemical potential [21]. Alternatively, one
can measure transport directly by separating different spin components and allowing
them to recombine [22].
19Another option is to take advantage of the fact that the system is in thermal
equilibrium and therefore intrinsically ’sampling’ all of the possible states with anenergy width 𝑘𝐵 𝑇 . The fluctuations in observed quantities therefore characterize
their response to thermodynamic potentials.

2.1

Fluctuation response theorem

This intuition is formalized by the fluctuation-response theorem. Given conjugate
variables x and f, that is, given a Hamiltonian of the form 𝐻 = 𝐻0 + 𝑥𝑓 , thefluctuation-response theorem relates the susceptibility of x to its equilibrium variance [23]:𝜕⟨𝑥⟩
Var(𝑥)
=
𝜕𝑓
𝑘𝐵 𝑇

(2.1)

So, for example, the variance of the atom number Var(N) is proportional to the
product of compressibility 𝜕𝑁/𝜕𝜇 and temperature. For a two-component gas, making the analogy between magnetization and spin imbalance such that 𝑀 = 𝑛↑ − 𝑛↓and 𝐻 = 𝜇↑ − 𝜇↓ , the spin susceptibility 𝜕𝑀/𝜕𝐻 is proportional to the productof temperature and Var(M). The size of the fluctuations determines the product oftemperature and response; this means that measuring the response function requires
measuring the temperature in addition to the fluctuations, or if the response is known
we can use the fluctuations as a form of thermometry.
Our work on local fluctuations in Fermi systems builds off of earlier work on using
fluctuations to characterize momentum-space correlations [24–26] and in bosons [27],and several of our experiments were performed nearly simultaneously with similar
observations from another group in Zurich [28, 29]

2.2

Fluctuations in an ideal Fermi gas

At zero temperature, the fluctuations in an ideal Fermi gas of sufficiently large volume
disappear. We can imagine the volume as an isolated system with its own chemical
20

potential and count up the occupation of states. Since the Fermi function approaches
a step, every state with energy below the chemical potential is occupied and every
state with energy above it is not, so there is no uncertainty in the measured numberof particles. At the other extreme, the distribution spreads out at high temperatureso that even the lowest-energy states have only a small chance of being occupied.
Counting a large number of unlikely events results is Poisson statistics: when 𝑛
independent events each occur with probability 𝑝, the variance in the number ofsuccesses 𝑛𝑝(1 − 𝑝) approaches the expected number 𝑛𝑝 as 𝑝 approaches zero.
This full-scale suppression of density fluctuations due to Pauli exclusion is a dramatic effect, which makes the temperature-dependence of the number fluctuations in
an ideal Fermi gas an excellent proof-of-principle experiment as well as an illustrationof a fundamental physical concept. In principle all we need to do is to repeatedly
measure the number of atoms in a particular volume to calculate the variance, andcounting the local atom number is one of the most common measurements in atomic
physics.

2.2.1

Fluctuation in absorption imaging

Typically one counts atoms using an absorption imaging procedure that involves
taking three images: a probe with atoms (PWA), a probe without atoms (PWOA) tonormalize the probe intensity, and a dark field (DF) to normalize the detector. We
try to work far below saturation, where absorption is multiplicative and the fractionof transmitted light is exponential in the atom count.
𝑃 𝑊 𝐴 − 𝐷𝐹𝜎𝑁
= exp(−)
𝑃 𝑊 𝑂𝐴 − 𝐷𝐹
𝐴

(2.2)

where 𝜎 is the cross section, 3𝜆2 /2𝜋 on resonance, N is the atom count in aparticular pixel, and A is the pixel area. How are fluctuations in atom number
reflected in absorption? The variance in optical density has contributions from photon
21and atom shot noise, doing the error propagation gives the following formula:(∆(𝑂𝐷))2 =1
𝜎
1++ (∆𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑚 )2⟨𝑁1 ⟩ ⟨𝑁2 ⟩ 𝐴(2.3)

𝑁1 is the average number of photons measured in a given pixel position for theprobe with atoms, 𝑁2 is the average number of photons measured in that pixel forthe probe without atoms, and (∆𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑚 )2 is the variance in atom number for thatpixel. By calculating the first two photon shot noise terms (which are uninteresting,because our light source is classical) and subtracting them from the total variance,
we isolate the atom number variance. When we analyze our experiments we also
subtract contributions from detector read noise and the photon shot noise in the dark
field, but these are fairly small contributions.
Naively, the fact that OD variance is proportional to atom number variance may
suggest that it would be advantageous to use a large number of atoms per pixel.
However, as the atom number increases, the relative photon shot noise contribution
from the probe with atoms 𝑁1 increases as well. Since 𝑁1 ∝ 𝑒−𝑂𝐷 , the ratio of atom
shot noise (∝ 𝑑) to photon shot noise (∝ (1 + 𝑒𝑑 )) is maximized for a 𝑂𝐷 ≈ 1.3.
Moreover, measurement errors from imaging fringes and other sources of technicalnoise are not constant in the optical density. They are, if anything, closer to constantin the transmission, and exponential in the optical density, favoring imaging at lower
densities.
The result is that typical in-trap optical densities are too high to make this arealistic measurement. Thankfully, noninteracting Fermi gases have a convenient
property allowing us to reduce the optical density to its optimum value.

2.2.2

Rescaling in time of flight

Optically thick clouds are typically studied by releasing them from the trap and allowing them to expand in time-of-flight. This technique is particularly useful in thecase of noninteracting Fermi gases because an exact rescaling [30] allows one to regard
the sample after ballistic expansion (and, in fact, most sequences of harmonic con22

finements) as identical to the equilibrium sample with spatially rescaled coordinates,
even though the sample is far from thermal equilibrium. This is why, for example, theshape fit functions used to determine the temperature of a noninteracting Fermi gas
do not depend on the time of flight, and the rescaling holds not just for the overallenvelope but for all correlation functions as well.

p

Ballistic expansion
p
2pF
x

x
2pF

Figure 2-1: Phase space diagram of ballistic expansion of a harmonically trapped
Fermi gas. Ballistic expansion conserves phase space density and shears the initiallyoccupied spherical area into an ellipse, but the occupation probability of phase space
cells does not change. In the center of the cloud, the local Fermi momentum and the
sharpness of the Fermi distribution are scaled by the same factor, keeping the ratioof local temperature to Fermi energy constant. The same is true for all points in the
expanded cloud relative to their corresponding unscaled in-trap points.

This is intuitively illustrated in Fig. 2-1. In the trap the Hamlitonian is symmetricbetween position and momentum and the cloud occupies a circle in phase space.
After release from the trap, momentum is ‘frozen‘ in but the cloud shears in phasespace as the original momentum is reflected in the position of each phase space cell.
Importantly, the occupation of the phase space cells is unchanged, so the rescaling√𝑥 → 𝑥 1 + 𝜔 2 𝑡2 maps the old cloud onto the new.
23

2.2.3

Image analysis

Within- and between-images variances
Even under the favorable conditions of time-of-flight, the atom noise signal is smallenough to be easily dwarfed by technical noise and errors in normalization. One of
the most important choices in conducting the experiment is to select which ’identical’
atom number measurements to group together to calculate the variance. Within asingle image, the atom number varies slowly; it is possible to do a ’within-image’comparison of pixels that are near each other, or at the same radius from the cloudcenter. Unfortunately the envelope still varies quickly enough that its derivative
makes a non-negligible contribution to the difference in atom count for adjacent pixels.
This can be corrected for, but the method still remains sensitive to spatial variationin the probe intensity. Alternatively, we can take a series of images and compare theatom count in the same pixel in a ’between-image’ comparison. This method has the
problem that the atom number often changes on the order of 10% from shot to shot,potentially overwhelming the shot noise contribution.
While trying to determine the optimal method of processing images, we conceivedof a potentially elegant solution to the problem. Using an interline CCD camera it
is possible to take two images, one of each spin state, separated by only 2𝜇𝑠. Aslong as the cloud is well-balanced, these images should be truly identical apart fromaton mumber fluctuations, without being susceptible to shot-to-shot fluctuations ora difficulty in identifying ’identical’ locations within the image. Unfortunately, thisapproach was derailed by technical problems. Both types of interline cameras we
used had technical noise issues (in one case, linear bands of noise, and in the other,a spatially-varying difference in gain between the two closely-timed images shown in
Fig. 2-2) significantly in excess of the atomic shot noise signal.
After abandoning two-state imaging, we ultimately settled on a between-mages
approach that incorporated within-images information in an aggregate way. By computing a 2D Thomas-Fermi profile from all of the pixels in each image and subtracting
it from the image before calculating the between-images atom number variance, we
24

Figure 2-2: Spatial gain variation of the Coolsnap HQ DIF from Princeton Instruments. Two identical images are taken after a variable delay and the normalized
difference, which should be uniformly zero, is shown for two delay times. A problem with the CCD clocking causes the detector gain to depend on the exposure timeand on spatial position. Because the two pictures taken in rapid succession cannot
be effectively compared, this imaging configuration is poorly suited to atom noise
experiments.

were able to minimze the effect of global shot-to-shot fluctuations in atom number.
Cross-section determination
The variances have components from atom noise, photon noise, and technical detector
noise, shown in Fig 2-3. We subtract the latter two components, which requires
calibrating the camera conversion gain between electrons (𝑒− ) and detector digitizer
units (ADU) of (1.070(5)ADU/𝑒− ) and read noise (3.5(3)ADU) using pictures without
atoms. To interpet the atom noise we need to calibrate the absorption cross section,
which depends on the imaging intensity.
Atomic shot noise dominates over photon shot noise only if each atom absorbs
several photons. As a result, the absorption images were taken using the cyclingtransition to the lowest lying branch of the 2 𝑃3/2 manifold. At the zero-interaction
field of 520𝐺 the decay into other states is negligible and the dominant effect on the
cross-section is from acceleration of the atoms by the photon absorption and recoil,which Doppler shifts the atoms out of resonance. To limit the need for nonlinear
25

Atom number variance

5000

0
0

Position (pixels)

100

Figure 2-3: Determination of profiles of the atom number variance. For each bin,the total photon count is determined, and its contribution (red) to the total varianceof the optical density (blue) is subtracted. The atom number variance (green) is
compared to the average atom number.

normalization procedures, we chose a probe laser intensity corresponding to an averageof only 6 absorbed photons per atom during 4 𝜇s of exposure time. At this intensity,
about 12% of the 6 Li saturation intensity, the measured optical density was found to
be reduced by 20% from its low-intensity value, shown in Figure 2-4.
Even for low imaging intensities, the resonant absorption cross-section of 2.14 ×

10−13 m2 turns out to be an inaccurate estimate of the cross-section observed inexperiments, presumably due to imperfections in polarization. Applying the measured
20% reduction for the experimental imaging intensities leads to a value of 1.71×10−1326

Optical density

1.4

1.2

1
0

0.05

0.1

Probe laser intensity (I / ISAT)
Figure 2-4: Absorption cross-section as a function of imaging intensity. The line
is a quadratic fit to the data. The reduction of the cross section is mainly due tothe Doppler effect caused by acceleration of the atoms by radiation pressure, and toa smaller extent, by partial saturation of the optical transition. At the probe lightintensity chosen in this study (the shaded region on the x axis), the number of photons
absorbed per atoms is about 6. The decrease of the cross section is slightly larger
than accounted by simple models.

m2 , substantially higher than either the estimate obtained from fits to the ballistic
expansion (1.48 × 10−13 m2 ) or that obtained from assuming that the atom shot noisein the wings of the hot cloud is fully Poissonian ((1.50 ± 0.12) × 10−13 m2 ). Since
the atom noise in the wings must be Poissonian, and since the value obtained frommaking this assumption is close to other estimates, we use the cross-section obtained
from atom noise as the ’final’ value for data analysis.
27

2.2.4

Probe volume considerations

Two factors make the size of the volume used for counting atoms important. First,
since the cloud expands in time of flight, not all of the cloud will be in focus. Soeven though the diffraction-limited resolution of the imaging system is much smaller
than the effective pixel size of 6.5 𝜇𝑚, atoms that are closer to or further away fromthe imaging plane may be spread out over several pixels, thus distorting the atom
noise statistics. Instead of attempting to optically characterize the depth of field of
our imaging system, we apply software binning to the raw images for a range of bin
sizes and find the effective pixel size (26𝜇𝑚) where the atom noise stops increasing,as shown in Fig 2-5.
Second, for small enough probe volumes we can no longer make the local density
approximation and quantum, as well as thermal fluctuations become important [31].
Pauli exclusion prevents there from being multiple particles within a range 1/𝑘𝐹 ofeach other, but as the volume decreases below this value the measured atom number
noise should approach Poissonian noise. If we write the variance of the number of∫︀
fermions 𝑁 = 𝑉 𝑑𝑟𝜓 † (𝑟)𝜓(𝑟) in a volume V as:
Var(𝑁 ) = ⟨𝑁 ⟩ − ⟨

∫︁

𝑑𝑟

𝑉

∫︁

𝑑𝑟′ 𝜓 † (𝑟)𝜓 † (𝑟′ )𝜓(𝑟)𝜓(𝑟′ )⟩

(2.4)

𝑉

Fourier transforming and shifting the integrals gives
Var(𝑁 ) = ⟨𝑁 ⟩ −

∫︁

𝑑3 𝑘
2𝜋 3

∫︁

∫︁

𝑑3 𝑟𝑒𝑖q·r |2

where
𝐹 (𝑞) = |𝑉

𝑑3 𝑘 ′
𝑛𝑘 𝑛𝑘′ 𝐹 (𝑘 − 𝑘 ′ )
3
2𝜋

(2.5)

(2.6)

. F is a purely geometric integral and for a sphere it has a width ≈ 1/𝑅, so for large
probe volumes relative to 1/𝑘𝐹 it can be treated effectively as a delta function. In
that case Var(N) is simple enough to calculate numerically, with the slope near zero28

1

Var(N)/N

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

0

10

20

30

40

Bin size (μm)
Figure 2-5: Observed atom number variance (normalized to 1 for Poissonian statistics)
versus bin size for hot (black) and cold (gray) clouds. In each case, a plateau isreached around 26𝜇𝑚 when the blurring of the bins due to finite optical resolution is
negligible.

agreeing with the first order term
𝑉 𝑎𝑟(𝑁 ) ≈ ⟨𝑁 ⟩

3𝑘𝐵 𝑇
2𝐸𝐹

(2.7)

given by, for example, using the zero-temperature expression for the compressibility
3/(2𝑛𝐸𝐹 ). For small probe volumes, however, the probability of measuring a nonzero
number of particles is small (and the probability of measuring more than one particle
is vanishing) and so the noise is trivially Poissonian.
29

Because the variance in atom number is uncorrelated, it allows us to characterize the transfer function of our imaging system. Fig. 2-6 shows the average power
spectrum of the optical density images as a function of spatial frequency. Because
the Fourier transform of uncorrelated fluctuations is flat, the deviation from flatnessof the density noise corresponds to blurring induced by the lens, barring the central
peak corresponding to the shape of the cloud. We can see that the power spectrum
decays to negligible amounts well before 𝑞𝑓 where quantum fluctuations become large
The finite background at large |𝑞|, to which atom noise cannot contribute due to theresolution limit, is due to the photon shot noise.

2.2.5

Fluctuations and temperature

Fig. 2-7 shows an absorption image of an expanding cloud of fermionic atoms. The’between-images’ method of image analysis calculates the variance in atom number atone (binned) pixel over all of the images. Combining these variances into one image
results in a ’variance image’, which for a Poissonian sample (with no suppression offluctuations), would be identical to a scaled mean image showing the number of atoms
per probe volume. This is close to the situation for the hottest cloud (the temperature
was limited by the trap depth), whereas the colder clouds show a distinct suppressionof the atom number variance, especially in the center of the cloud where the local
𝑇 /𝜇 is smallest.
In Fig. 2-11, profile of the variance are compared to theoretical predictions, showing good agreement with temperatures computed from 2D Thomas-Fermi fits of the
shape of the cloud. The predictions (Fig 2-8 are made by making the local density
approximation and integrating 𝑝(1 − 𝑝) over all momenta using the Fermi function,and then integrating once more over the line of sight:⟨𝑁¯2 ⟩ =

∫︁ ∞

−∞

𝑑𝑧

∫︁ ∞
0

𝑉 𝑑𝑝 2
𝑝2
𝑝2
2 2
𝑝 𝐹(
−(𝜇0 −𝜔 𝑧 ), 𝑇 )(1−𝐹 (−(𝜇0 −𝜔 2 𝑧 2 ), 𝑇 )) (2.8)
2
2𝜋
2𝑚
2𝑚

Where 𝐹 (𝐸 − 𝜇, 𝑇 ) is the Fermi function.
30

Power (arb units)

(a)
200
100
0

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

k / kF(b)(c)

k / kF 0
1

0

1

k / kF
Figure 2-6: (a) Radially averaged power spectra of average optical density images forhot (solid line) and cold (dashed line) samples (b) Power spectrum of cold sample(arbitrary units) (c) Power spectrum of hot sample (arbitrary units)

The temperatures are obtained from standard Thomas-Fermi shape fits, but asdescribed in detail in [32], this process is not always as straightforward as it seems.
Figures 2-9 and 2-10 show systematic changes in the fit temperature as a function of
the time of flight and of the size of the region used for fitting. When the time of flightis too short, the effect of small intensity variations in the probe beam or saturation
effects are magnified. We make sure to conduct thermometry in a parameter regime
31

(a)

Atom
count

(b)

(c)

4000
0

N
(∆N)2
Hot

Cold

Figure 2-7: Comparison of density images to variance images. For Poissonian fluctuations, the two images at a given temperature should be identical. The varianceimages were obtained by determining the local density fluctuations from a set of 85
images taken under identical conditions. (a) Two dimensional image of optical density of an ideal Fermi gas after 7 ms of ballistic expansion. The noise data weretaken by limiting the field of view to the dashed region of interest, allowing for faster
image acquisition. (b) For the heated sample, variance and density pictures are almost identical, implying only modest deviation from Poissonian statistics. (c) Fermi
suppression of density fluctuations deep in the quantum degenerate regime manifests
itself through the difference between density and variance picture. Especially in thecenter of the cloud, there is a large suppression of density fluctuations. The varianceimages were smoothed over 6×6 bins. The width of images (b) and (c) is 2 mm.

where the fit temperature is locally flat with respect to the time of flight and analysis
region, and where shape fits from images taken from different directions agree on thetemperature.
As shown in Fig.2-11, the measured fluctuations demonstrate excellent agreementwith predictions, suggesting that fluctuations can be measured quantitatively andused as an alternative form of thermometry.

2.2.6

Beyond the second moment

In principle the higher-order moments of the density should reflect the higher-ordercorrelations [34] , and we know that at zero temperature the fourth moment of density⟨(𝑛 − ⟨𝑛⟩)4 ⟩, like all of the higher moments, must be zero. Because of technical noise
32

VarHNLN
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

tΜ

Figure 2-8: Predicted atom number variance versus temperature for large probe volumes, calculated by numerically integrating the Fermi function.

we do not, in fact, observe the expected suppression of higher moments. The shaded
areas in Figure 2-12 are derived from theoretical values for the variance of the sample
variance for a Poisson distribution. This is given by(𝑚 − 1)2(𝑚 − 1)(𝑚 − 3)
Var(Var(𝑁 )) =
𝜇4 −
𝜇2
3
𝑚
𝑚3

(2.9)

. where m is the number of observations in each sample a. The moments 𝜇2 and 𝜇4
are the central moments of the population distribution. For a Poisson distribution,
Var(Var(𝑁 )) =(𝑚 − 1)(𝑚 − 3)(𝑚 − 1)2⟨𝑁 ⟩(1 + 3⟨𝑁 ⟩) −(⟨𝑁 ⟩)33𝑚
𝑚3(2.10)

where ⟨𝑁 ⟩ is the population mean. For 𝑚, ⟨𝑁 ⟩ ≫ 1, this is simply 2⟨𝑁 ⟩2 /𝑚. So,
surprisingly, the variance of the variance of the cold cloud matches the Poissonianpredictions better than it does the expected suppression. Note that the above analysis
33

Figure 2-9: Temperature versus time of flight for two cold clouds at different temperatures. Clouds are in a ’tight’ optical trap, a slightly different from that used in
the fluctuation experiments. For short times of flight and high optical densities, themeasured temperature is systematically too low.

corrects errors in our previous discussions of this subject.

2.3

Spin fluctuations in an interacting Fermi gas

After proving that the fluctuations in a noninteracting Fermi gas behave as expected
we would like to characterize them in interacting systems. When a gas consists,around the Fermi surface, largely of molecules or generalized Cooper pairs, one expects
the number fluctuations to consist of pairs and the fluctuations in relative number
to be heavily suppressed. Unfortunately the exact rescaling that allows time-of-flightimages of noninteracting Fermi ages to be treated, essentially, as rescaled in-situ
34

Figure 2-10: Temperature versus analysis region size for different values of the timeof flight. Clouds are in a ’tight’ optical trap, a slightly different from that used in thefluctuation experiments.

images does not hold for interacting ones. Nor is it straightforward to calculate, fora strongly interacting gas, what the interactions do to the correlation functions as
the cloud expands. Off-resonant absorption imaging is one possibility, but then one
has to contend with the lensing of the probe beam by the optically thick, dispersive
cloud.

2.3.1

Disperive imaging

The dispersion that distorts off-resonant images of dense clouds can be used instead
to characterize them. How does one image a phase object in focus? One can thinkof absorption imaging as a form of homodyne detection where the scattered light ismixed again with the incident light on the detector. By using a phase spot in the
Fourier plane to phase shift the incident light, one can shift the phase of the homodyne
35Var(N)/1000
5 (a)

0

0

(c)

(b)

100
Position (bins)

Figure 2-11: Comparison of observed variances (black dots) with a theoretical model(black line) and the observed atom number (gray), at three different temperatures (a,b, and c), showing 50, 40, and 15% suppression. Noise thermometry is implemented
by fitting the observed fluctuations, resulting in temperatures 𝑇 /𝑇𝐹 of 0.23±.01,
0.33±.02, and 0.60±.02. This is in good agreement with temperatures 0.21±.01,
0.31±.01, and 0.6±.1 obtained by fitting the shape of the expanded cloud [33]. The
quoted uncertainties correspond to one standard deviation and are purely statistical.

or, in the case of dark ground imaging, remove it completely
In fact, this can be done more simply without employing a phase spot at all andusing the Faraday effect [35, 36]. If we write the light polarizations in the circular
(︁ )︁
(︁ )︁
+
−
1
basis where 𝜎 = 0 and 𝜎 = 01 , then we can apply linearly polarized light at
(︁ )︁
(︁
)︁
(1−𝜀)+𝜀𝑖
1
and
a
weak
dispersive
objectwill
convertthatto. Then, by putting
1
1
(︁ )︁
1
a crossed linear polarizer after the atoms at −1, we can reproduce dark ground

imaging, with a signal proportional to 𝜀2 with zero background, or by putting it at(︁ )︁
145∘ , or −𝑖in the circular basis, we can reproduce phase contrast imaging with asignal linear in 𝜀. In fact, this polarization contrast imaging technique is cleaner thanthe Fourier technique because it does not distort the image by high-pass-filtering it
via the phase-shifting spot in the Fourier plane.
Surprisingly, when we performed the experiments we observed similar intensity
fluctuations with and without the polarizer in place, despite the fact that for our
choice of detuning the phase effect should dominate. The fluctuations without thepolarizer were a factor of ten larger than expected for full Poissoninan noise. Ulti36

Atom number variance

6000

4000

2000

0
0

2000

4000

Atom number
Figure 2-12: Variance of the variance for hot (red) and cold (blue) clouds. The
bars reflect the observed variance of variance, and the shaded areas correspond totheoretical predictions assuming Poissoninan noise. We expect, and do not observe,strong suppression of the fourth moment of density for the cold cloud.

mately we explained this surprising effect as being due to a speckle-like effect.

2.3.2

Speckle imaging

Light propagating through a phase grating acquires an intensity modulation after
spatial propagation, as in the Talbot effect [37]. For a sinusoidal grating maximum
contrast is achieved after a propagation distance 2𝑎2 /𝜆, where 𝑎 is the grating spacing,in other words, after a distance proportional to the Rayleigh length for a spot thesize of the grating spacing.
Dispersive effects therefore manifest themselves in images whenever the defocus, orthe cloud size, is substantially larger than this distance. This is similar in some ways37

to defocus contrast imaging, with the important diference that the phase objects being
imaged are small local fluctuations rather than the large cloud enveloope, dramaticaly
reducing the required defocus distance [38].
For a random phase object, the phenomena that results is similar to that of laser
speckle, which one observes, for example, when one views the light scattered from alaser beam incident on an index card. The surface roughness of the card causes thescattered beam to experience random phase shifts, which spatial propagation converts
to intensity noise [39]. This effect is simulated in Figure 2-13.

2.3.3

Susceptibility and compressibility

Sample variance images resulting from this speckle effect are shown in Figure 2-14.
The speckle is a highly sensitive probe of the phase fluctuations in the cloud, andwe can easily resolve fluctuations less than 10% of atom shot noise. Unfortunately,
the fact that it appears as a consequence of spatial propagation makes it difficult todefinitely isolate the contributions from different spatial regions, so in analyzing the
speckle images we tend to aggregate the cloud as a whole.
By changing the probe detuing, the relative phase shifts of the two spin components can be either additive or subtractive, as shown in Figure 2-15. This allows us
to measure both the compressibility and spin susceptibility of the cloud. To do so at
a variety of fields requires scanning the imaging frequency over several GHz, so westabilized an additional diode laser with a variable frequency offset. Because a narrow
relative linewidth is not important,in our experiment, our offset lock was constructedusing an off-the-shelf phase detector/loop filter (RF-BAY PDF100, FPS8-18).
Our goal was to determine at various interaction strengths the normalized susceptibility 𝜒̃︀ = 𝜒/𝜒0 and compressibility 𝜅̃︀ = 𝜅/𝜅0 , where 𝜒0 = 3𝑛/2𝐸𝐹 and 𝜅0 = 3/2𝑛𝐸𝐹

are the susceptibility and compressibility of a non-interacting Fermi gas at zero temperature. We therefore calibrate our measurement by measuring the spin fluctuations in a noninteracting mixture. Fig. 2-14 shows raw profiles of the difference
and sum variances of the measured optical densities ∆2− = (𝑐 ∆(𝑁1 − 𝑁2 ))2 and∆2+ = (𝑐′ ∆(𝑁1 /3 + 𝑁2 ))2 . In these relations 𝑐 and 𝑐′ are the conversion factors be38

Transmission image variance (arb. units)
0
0

2f

d

50

2f

100

150

Defocus distance d (μm)
Figure 2-13: Simulation of propagation effects after light has passed through a Poissonian phase noise object. Shown are the variance measured in the amplitude or inphase quadrature (black line) and the out-of-phase quadrature (gray line) as a functionof defocus distance, for an imaging system with a numerical aperture of 0.14. Within
a distance less than 5 percent of our cloud size, noise becomes equally distributed
between the two quadratures and the variances in transmission and phase-contrast
images become the same. (Top inset) For small phase fluctuations, an in-focus phasenoise object gives no amplitude contrast, but when it is out of focus it does. (Bottom
inset) Sample intensity patterns for a defocused phase object.

tween number fluctuations and fluctuations in optical density in the specific probe
volume 𝑉 . Without interactions, 𝑁1 and 𝑁2 are uncorrelated, and one predicts(∆(𝑁1 − 𝑁2 ))2 /(∆(𝑁1 /3 + 𝑁2 ))2 = 2/(1 + (1/3)2 ) = 1.8. The observed ratio of∆2− /∆2+ = 1.56(14) reflects excess noise contributing to ∆2+ due to residual system√︀
atic dispersive effects and is accounted for by setting 𝑐′ /𝑐 = 1.8/1.56. For hightemperatures, the atomic noise of the non-interacting gas approaches shot noise; for39

Figure 2-14: (Top) Example speckle noise image, with white box indicating analysis region. (Bottom) Noise data for noninteracting (left) and resonantly interacting(right) cold clouds, showing ∆2− (black dots) and ∆2+ (grey dots). Solid lines are
Gaussian fits to the data, and dotted lines are expected full Poissonian noise for thecorresponding quantities based on density determined from off-resonant absorption.

lower temperatures we observe a reduction in noise due to Pauli blocking as in theprevious section.
Recomposing the variances from the two experimentally accessible linear combinations these relations become ∆2− /𝑁 𝑐2 = 3/2 (𝑇 /𝑇𝐹 ) 𝜒̃︀ and 9/4 ∆2+ /𝑁 𝑐′2 −1/4 ∆2− /𝑁 𝑐2 = 3/2 (𝑇 /𝑇𝐹 ) 𝜅̃︀ and allow us to determine 𝑐 and 𝑐′ by using the 527G
(︀)︀
noise measurements for which 𝜒̃︀ = 𝜅
̃︀ = 1 + 𝑂 (𝑇 /𝑇𝐹 )2 .
Fig. 2-16 shows the spin susceptibility, the compressibility, and the ratio between

the two quantities for the interacting mixtures as the interaction strength is varied
through the BEC-BCS crossover. The susceptibility and compressibility reproduce
the expected qualitative behavior: for the sample at unitarity, where the transition
temperature is sufficiently high that a sizable portion of the sample is superfluid, andfor the sample on the BEC side, where even the normal-state atoms form molecules,
40

Figure 2-15: Phase as a function of the probe detunings used in the experiment. Bychanging the probe detuning one can measure different linear combinations of the two
spin states, from which one can extract the sum and difference noise.

the spin susceptibility is strongly suppressed relative to the compressibility. This
reflects the fact that the atoms form bound molecules or generalized Cooper pairs;
the spin susceptibility should be exponentially small in the binding energy, while theincreased compressibility reflects the bosonic character of the molecular condensate.
At 915G and 1000G, where the sample is above the superfluid critical temperature,
the susceptibility is larger but still below its value for the noninteracting gas, reflecting
the persistence of pair correlations even in the normal phase of the gas.
41

Figure 2-16: (a) The ratio 𝜒/𝜅, (b) the normalized susceptibility 𝜒/𝜒0 , and (c) the
normalized compressibility 𝜅/𝜅0 in the BEC-BCS crossover. The variances derived
from sequences of images are converted into thermodynamic variables using the measured temperatures and a calibration factor determined from the noninteracting gas.
The vertical line indicates the onset region of superfluidity, as determined via condensate fraction measurements. The curves show theoretical zero temperature estimates
based on 1st (dotted) and 2nd order (solid) perturbative formulas obtained from Landau’s Fermi-liquid theory integrated along the line of sight, and results from a Monte
Carlo calculation (dashed) for the compressibility in a homogeneous system [? ].

2.4

Dynamics of spin fluctuations in a repulsive Fermi
gas

In situ noise measurements are robust in the sense that they depend only on thelocal properties of the sample, without requiring that the cloud be overall in the
ground state of a particular trapping potential. As a result they are well-suited to
dynamical measurements where the cloud shape is changing or the potential is notexactly known.
This makes them ideal for characterizing systems on the upper branch of a Feshbach resonance where the sample is intrinsically unstable with respect to a molecular bound state. Strong, short-range repulsive interactions cannot be achieved withpurely repulsive potentials: a hard core potential is characterized by a positive scat42

tering length 𝑎 identical to the radius of the hard core. Creating strong interactions
with 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 ≥ 1 therefore requires that the hard core radius to be comparable to theinverse of the interatomic spacing and therefore no longer short range. On the other
hand arbitrarily large repulsive scattering lengths can be realized with short-range
attractive potentials if the energy of the interacting atoms is nearly resonant witha bound state with binding energy ~2 /(𝑚𝑎2 ), but then the repulsive gas is then bynecessity only metastable with respect to pair formation.

2.4.1

Stoner instability

Strong repulsive interactions create a competition between kinetic and interactionenergy. When the system polarizes, there are more particles of one type, and Pauli
exclusion requires that the additional particles occupy levels with higher kinetic energy. By doing so, however, it avoids the interaction energy, and one might expectthat the system transitions to a ferromagnetic phase when interactions become large.
This is borne out by a simple mean field analysis. If we start with an initiallybalanced sample and shift particles within an energy width 𝛿𝜀 from the Fermi levelfrom one spin component to the other, then∆𝐸𝑖𝑛𝑡 = ∆𝑈 𝑛↑ 𝑛↓ = 𝑈 (𝑁𝑁𝑁− 𝐷(𝜀)𝛿𝜀)( + 𝐷(𝜀)𝛿𝜀) − 𝑈 ( )22
2
2∆𝐸𝑘𝑖𝑛 = (𝐷(𝜀)𝛿𝜀)𝛿𝜀

(2.11)(2.12)

where 𝐷(𝜀) is the density of states at the Fermi level, and so the system is unstable
to domain formation when 𝑈 𝐷(𝜀) > 1. However, it is an open question whether
this mean-field treatment is even qualitatively accurate – for example, it incorrectlypredicts a ferromagnetic phase transition in one dimension where it is rigorously
forbidden [40]. The Stoner model has been studied extensively by theorists, butthere is no consensus as to the nature, order, or location of the ferromagnetic phasetransition. [41–44].
An earlier experiment in our group observed indirect signatures they deemed to
be indicative of the ferromagnetic phase transition: a minimum in the three-body
43recombination rate, minimum in kinetic energy, and a maximum in the cloud volume[45]. However they were unable to observe domains and eddy currents from the steel
vacuum chamber limited their time resolution to 4.5ms.
A direct measurement of the fluctuations would definitively confirm the presenceor absence of domains because the spin fluctuations are dramatically enhanced by ferromagnetic correlations. The spin fluctuations are enhanced by a multiplicative factor
equal to the average number of particles in a domain, and our previous measurement
revealed more than enough sensitivity to measure domains of a few particles.

2.4.2

Spin fluctuations after a rapid quench

In addition to measuring the spin fluctuations directly, we dramatically improve thespeed of measurements by combining the reduced eddy currents of a glass cell vacuum
chamber with a fast current jump. By using an external capacitor to charge a capacitor to 370V, we can overcome the inductance of the coils to switch the magnetic
fields in 350𝑢𝑠. The experimental timing is shown in the inset of Fig 2-18.

Figure 2-17: Schematic for capacitor ’booster’ box for fast current jumps. The shaded
box represents the rest of the high power circuitry used during normal operation.
Component values are chosen to achieve critical damping.

Figure 2-19 shows the observed spin fluctuations enhancement compared to the44Energy / atom (EF)

2
1

A

B

0

magnetic
field-1

speckle trap
image
off

A
350 μs

-2
10

B

t

0
5
-5
Interaction parameter (1/kFa)-10

Figure 2-18: Diagram showing energy levels and timing of the experiment. The upper(repulsive) and lower (attractive) branches of the Feshbach resonance are connectedby 3-body collisions. In our experiment, we quickly jump from a weakly interacting
Fermi gas (A) to a strongly interacting one (B) with a rapid magnetic field change.
The evolution of correlations and domains and the molecule formation (population of
the lower branch) are studied as a function of hold time 𝑡.

non-interacting cloud at 527 G. The variance enhancement factor Var(M)/Var(M)0
reaches its maximum value of 1.6 immediately after the quench, decreasing during the
2 ms afterward. The absence of a dramatic increase shoes that no domains form andthat the sample remains in the paramagnetic phase throughout. Similar observations
were made for a wide range of interaction strengths and wait times. Note that firstorder perturbation theory [46] predicts an increase of the susceptibility by a factorof 1.5 at 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 = 0.5 and by a factor of 2 at 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 = 0.8 (i.e. no dramatic increase for
𝑘𝐹 𝑎 < 1). Therefore, our data shows no evidence for the Fermi gas approaching theStoner instability.

2.4.3

Pair formation

What happens to the system instead? One possibility is that a significant fractionof the atoms are converted into molecular pairs on the lower branch of the Feshbachresonance in a process that competes with domain formation [47]. We characterize
the pair formation by comparing the total number of atoms and molecules 𝑁a +2𝑁mol
45

(determined by taking an absorption image after ballistic expansion at high magnetic
field where molecules and atoms have the same absorption resonance) to the number offree atoms (determined by rapidly sweeping the magnetic field to 5G before releasing
the atoms and imaging the cloud, converting pairs into deeply bound molecules thatare completely shifted out of resonance) [48].
The time evolution of the molecule production (Fig. 2-20) shows two regimes of
distinct behavior. For times less than 1 ms, we observe a considerable number ofatoms converted into molecules, while the total number 𝑁a +2𝑁mol remains constant.
The initial drop in atom number becomes larger as we increase the final magnetic
field, and saturates at around 50 % near the Feshbach resonance.
For longer times on the scale of 100 ms we observe a steady increase of themolecule fraction to 90 % for the longest hold time. We interpret this as a resultof system reaching thermal equilibrium between atoms and molecules, where thesystem thermalizes after the rapid quench and begins to cool itself evaporatively.
This cooling eventually shifts the atom-molecule equilibrium towards high molecule
fractions. During the same time scale, a slow loss in both atom number and total
number is observed, resulting from evaporation loss and inelastic atom-molecule andmolecule-molecule collisions, which lead to a large energy release via the creation of
deeply-bound molecules, and subsequent ejection of particles from the trap.
Does our experiment provide evidence that the rapid conversion into molecules
is faster than the evolution of ferromagnetic domains for all parameter values? Webelieve that it does. First, for strong interactions with 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 around 1, one expects
both instabilities (pair formation and Stoner instability) to have rates which scalewith the Fermi energy 𝐸𝐹 and therefore with 𝑛2/3 . Therefore, one cannot change thecompetition between the instabilities by working at higher or lower densities. According to Ref. [47] the fastest unstable modes for domain formation have a wavevector𝑞 ≈ 𝑘𝐹 /2 and grow at a rate of up to 𝐸𝐹 /4~ when the cloud is quenched sufficiently
far beyond the critical interaction strength. Unstable modes with such wavevectors
will develop “domains” of half a wavelength or size 𝜉 = 𝜋/𝑞 = 2𝜋/𝑘𝐹 containing 5
atoms per spin state in a volume 𝜉 3 . This rate is comparable to the observed conver46

sion rates into pairs of 0.13𝐸𝐹 . Therefore, at best, “domains” of a few particles could
form, but before they can grow further and prevent the formation of pairs (in a fullypolarized state), rapid pair formation takes over and populates the lower branch of
the Feshbach resonance.
Still, theoretical analysis of the ferromagnetic instability has revealed that thephase transition depends sensitively on system parameters including dimensionality[49, 50], band structure [51, 52], and interactions [53]. By imposing a weak latticeor changing the interactions, it may be possible to observe the transition to a ferromagnetic phase. As an example of the latter, it may be possible to suppress pairformation by using the interactions near narrow Feshbach resonances, where the pairs
should have a much smaller overlap matrix element with the free atoms, but where
the interatomic potential can no longer be considered as short-range.
kFa

Relative spin fluctuations

1.6

0

0.65

1.14 2.27 ∞

(a)

1.6

1.4

1.4

1.2

1.2

1

1
800
527 750
Magnetic field (G)

850

(b)

0

1
2
Hold time (ms)3

Figure 2-19: Spin fluctuations (a) after 350 𝜇s as a function of magnetic field and (b)on resonance as a function of hold time scaled to the value measured at 527G. Even
at strong repulsive interactions, the measured spin fluctuations are barely enhanced,
indicating only short-range correlations and no domain formation. The spin fluctuations were determined for square bins of 2.6 𝜇m, each containing on average 1000
atoms per spin state.

47

Hold time [ms]
20

40

60

80

100

120

140

1

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0

0

Molecule Fraction

Surviving fraction

1

0Surviving fraction

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0

1

2

3
4
Hold time [ms]5

6

Figure 2-20: Characterization of molecule formation at short and long hold times, andat different values of the interaction strength. The closed symbols, circles (black) at
790G with 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 = 1.14, squares (blue) at 810G with 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 = 2.27 and diamonds (red) at
818G with 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 = 3.5 represent the normalized number of free atoms, the open symbols
the total number of atoms including those bound in Feshbach molecules (open circles
at 790G with 𝑘𝐹 𝑎 = 1.14). The crosses (green) show the molecule fraction. The
characteristic time scale is set by the Fermi time ~/𝐸𝐹 = 43𝜇s, calculated with acloud averaged Fermi energy.

48Chapter 3
Development of an Apparatus for
Sodium and Lithium Optical LatticeExperiments
The fluctuation experiments in the previous chapter were performed in an early BEC
apparatus built in 1998 [54] that had been upgraded to become one of the first machines to achieve quantum degeneracy in fermions [55]. After more than a decadeof pioneering work, including the first observation of fermionic superfluidity in optical lattices [56], this apparatus had finally begun to show its age. Not only had
key apparatus components such as gate valves and titanium filaments begun to fail,but the precision of cold atom experiments and consequently the demands in termsof stability and of optical quality had advanced far beyond what anyone could haveenvisioned more than a decade prior.
Consequently, while the noise measurements were being made, primarily by Christian Sanner and myself, a next-generation apparatus was already in the process of
being designed and prepared by the other members of the lab. Its initial design andconstruction are described in detail in Aviv Keshet’s thesis [19].
This chapter describes the process of developing that machine from the point of its
first magneto-optical trap into its current status as a versatile tool for studying cold
atoms in optical lattices. The design of our next-generation apparatus was focused on49

versatility rather than on one particular strength or area of research such as single-site
resolution [13] or electron microscopy [57]. This flexibility proved valuable in allowing
for a number of ’pivots’ in the scientific research agenda of our lab. During apparatus
construction the goal we envisioned was to observe antiferromagnetic ordering or
correlations in the Fermi-Hubbard model [11, 58]. But during that time anotheropportunity presented itself: a different lab in our group working with 87 Rb was in
the process of realizing a novel scheme for implementing synthetic gauge fields, butthey observed anomalous heating that prevented them from reaching the ground stateof the Harper Hamiltonian [59]. It appeared that the higher recoil frequency of Na,
coupled with the ease of achieving large gradients in our apparatus, might allow thesame scheme to be implemented with a lower heating rate. The suspicion that thoseexperimental difficulties were related to collisional physics motivated an extended
study of the relationship between interactions and Bloch oscillations described in thenext chapter. And now with the rubidium team’s strong evidence that they haveobserved the ground state of the Harper Hamiltonian, we have largely turned our
focus towards implementing synthetic gauge fields with fermions. The result of these
rapid pivots, is unfortunately, that these next two chapters may resemble a technicalsketch more than an exposition of new scientific results.

3.1

Na Bose condensate in a plugged quadrupole

In our dual-species machine, the starting point for lattice experiments with both
sodium and lithium is a Bose condensate of sodium. When operated in the dualspecies mode the thermalization of Na with Li prevents it from condensing, but alarge Na condensate in the single-species configuration, on the order of several 106
atoms, demonstrates that enough cooling power is present to create a large degeneratesample of lithium.
503.1.1

Motivation for a plugged trap configuration

In the simplest magnetic trap for neutral atoms, two coils in anti-Helmholtz configuration are used to generate a 3D quadrupole field, where atoms experience a constantrestoring force. This setup is not sufficient to achieve quantum degeneracy because
the magnetic field at the trap center is zero, and so as the atoms cool they spend
increasing amounts of time in its vicinity, where they are likely to undergo Majorana
spin flips to untrapped states and subsequent heating and ejection from the trap.
There are three popular approaches to solving this problem. First, in the IoffePritchard design one can use additional coils to make the magnetic field nonzero atits local minimum [60]. Second, one can create a time-orbiting potentail (TOP) trapby moving the magnetic field zero in a periodic way so that the time-averaged field isnonzero [61]. Third, one can combine the magnetic potential with an attractive [62]or repulsive [63] optical potential so that the atoms are trapped away from the regionof zero field.
For comparable coil sizes and currents, the last ’plugged-trap’ approach offers thetightest confinement and hence the fastest evaporation and cycle time – as modern
atomic physics experiments become more data-intensive and time is at a premium,it has experienced a resurgence in popularity [64, 65]. The coil geometry is also thesimplest, especially considering that with by reversing the current direction in one
coil of the pair, it is nearly ideal for generating the large homogeneous bias fields used
for tuning interactions near a Feshbach resonance [66].
The main disadvantages of the plugged quadrupole are the requirement of anadditional blue-detuned laser and imaging along the plug axis, and its sensitivity tosmall pointing drifts of the optical plug, which are compounded by environmental
instability.

3.1.2

Experimental implementation

We reduce the workflow effects of plug drift by making the plug easy to realign. By
adding motorized actuators (Newport TRA12CC) to the last mirror before the vac51

uum chamber, the plug can be moved in repeatable 2𝜇rad steps without the needto physically manipulate the actuator, dramatically increasing the speed and reproducibility of plug realignments.
The plug beam itself comes from a Spectra-Physics Millenia Xs (diode-pumped
solid-state laser) that outputs 9.5 W at 532 nm. The plug waist is to estimatedto be around 80𝜇𝑚. Because the beam is repulsive, the potential near the trap
minimum tends to be subject to corrugations from imperfections in the plug beam.
Often, as shown in Fig 3-2, the trap will have multiple local minima. Optimization of
the sample requires maximizing the condensate number in one specific minimum; toensure a strong asymmetry the plug is moved off of the magnetic trap center, typicallyby a distance approximately 40𝜇𝑚,
Forced rf evaporation of sodium typically occurs on either the |𝐹, 𝑚𝐹 ⟩ = |1, −1⟩ →|2, −2⟩ or the |𝐹, 𝑚𝐹 ⟩ = |1, −1⟩ → |1, 0⟩ transition. The first transition is often easier
to use because it occurs at rf frequencies, but the large amount of rf radiation caninterfere with the normal operation of electronic devices ranging from power supplies
and actuators to flow and temperature meters. Since evaporation on a microwave
transition near 1.7 GHz is necessary anyway when trying to evaporate sodium without evaporating lithium, we choose that transition for our experiment. The final atom
number seems quite sensitive to the Rabi frequency for forced evaporation. We use
a 50W microwave amplifier (EMPOWER 1119) located < 50 cm from the experimental apparatus to minimize attenuation and a single wire loop as the microwave
antenna, since owing to the the evaporation frequencies ranging from 1.4 to 1.8 GHz
it’s impractical to use a resonant circuit to increase the RF power.
We load about 8×108 atoms into a magnetic trap with a gradient of 50 G/cm froma dark-spot MOT [67]. The trap is then ramped up to 750 G/cm for evaporation.
While we are able to achieve BEC in 8𝑠 without trap decompression, we obtain a larger
condensate of about 5 × 106 atoms after performing 9s of evaporation, then reducing
the gradient to 75𝐺/𝑐𝑚 in 3s and performing 3s of evaporation in the decompressing
trap. The number and temperature during the evaporation ramp are shown in Figs. 33 and 3-4.
52

Figure 3-1: Condensate in a plugged trap after 15𝑚𝑠 of time of flight. Because ofcorrugations near the edges of the repulsive potential provided by the plug, the atoms
are trapped in multiple local minima. Small misalignment of the plug maximizes thecondensed atom number in a single minimum.

3.2

Optical potentials

3.2.1

Optics layout

Just as the choice between different magnetic trapping geometries has a cascading
effect on the rest of the apparatus design, so does the choice of vacuum chamber.
Experiments typically take place within either a small (≈ 5cm wide) glass cell, which
offers a large solid angle but suffers from stray reflections, or within a larger steel
chamber with many viewports, where the range of incident angles is smaller but
where beams can enter normally incident to antireflection coatings and where thevacuum chamber itself is more mechanically robust.
The large solid angle available for a glass cell, combined wtih the typically lower
optical quality, means that it is generally preferable to direct beams into the exper53

Figure 3-2: Condensate imaged in trap, illustrating the effect of the plug on thetrapped atoms.

iment at slightly different angles. In a steel chamber this is less desirable and so
inevitably different beams must share the same optics. We prioritize the different
beam paths based on the following rules:∙ The MOT is the lowest priority – so low, in fact we can move the MOT mirrors
out of the way during the RF evaporation using pnematic actuators, without
letting the the accumulated drift impact the experiment repeatability.
∙ The lattice is the highest priority, both in terms of stability and in terms of
the quality of the beam profile. Consequently the lattice should not be transmitted through more optical elements than necessary, which means that otherthan the MOT it should enter the chamber last. Since we would like there
to be be imaging along the lattice directions, the final lattice mirrors and lat54

Figure 3-3: Temperature plotted versus evaporation time. The blue dots correspondto temperatures in a tight magnetic trap used for the initial stage of evaporation,
whereas the red dots correspond to temperatures in the decompressed magnetic trap
normally used at the very end of evaporation. The temperature was calculated byfitting a Gaussian profile to the cloud in time of flight and using the width to estimate
the average velocity in trap.

tice retroreflectors should be dichroics, allowing the visible imaging light to betransmitted.

∙ The situation is slightly different for the top axis, owing to mechanical considerations – because of gravity, it’s hard to mount large numbers of optics ina vertical column in an extremely stable fashion. Therefore, we choose to attach the final mirrors for the vertical lattice to the vacuum chamber itself withshort lever arms, requiring the MOT beams as well as the imaging beam topass through the lattice dichroics. Below the vacuum chamber we use a mir55

Figure 3-4: Atom number plotted versus evaporation time. Again the blue and red
dots are compressed and decompressed samples, respectively. Atom numbers are
estimated using the resonant cross section.

ror mounted on a rotation stage (Newport URS75BCC) to switch between the
MOT and imaging configurations.
Applying these rules generates the optics layouts shown in Figs. 3-5 and 3-6.

3.2.2

High power IR considerations

Optical lattice experiments work best when as much power as possible is available,
particularly in the lattice beams. Since increasing confinement is easier than reducing
it with blue-detuned beams, and since it is often desirable to work at low densities
near one particle per site, we want large lattice beams with low curvature and simultaneously enough intensity to reach deep into the Mott insulator regime.
56

Figure 3-5: Main experiment layout (not to scale). This diagram illustrates thelayout of the optics in the horizontal plane of the atoms, including the plug and thetwo horizontal lattice/imaging axes.)

For us, this means that we want up to 10W per beam, which is large enoughthat some care must be taken in the various parts of the optical system. We use
photonic crystal fibers from NKT photonics with the maximum possible mode area,
the LMA-25 photonic crystal fibers that are not polarization maintaining. They are
end-sealed (we find fused silica end caps unnecessary) and connectorized to SMA-905
high power connectors by a French technology center, Alphanov.
Because of its superior thermal properties, it is important that optics experiencing
high intensities for long times be made from fused silica rather than a borosilicate
glass like BK7. Our fiber collimators are fused silica components from Micro Laser
Systems (FC5-Y-FS) or large area collimators from Kirchoff and Schacter (60FCSMA-T-4-A100-03).
57

To top dichroic

Verticallattice

Verticallattice

Vertical
Raman

Raman

30 MHzλ/430 MHz

λ/4

Horizontal raman periscope(to horizontal plane breadboards)

Figure 3-6: Top axis breadboard layout (not to scale). This diagram illustrates the
optics for the vertical lattice and Raman beams.)

As a precaution to prevent cavity formation and damaging back-reflections into
the fiber laser, we insert an optical isolator immediately after the fiber output on theexperiment table. One consequence of this is that when we optimize the mode overlapof the retroreflected beam by maximizing the back-transmission of the retroreflectedbeam through the fiber, we use lock-in detection where the lattice beam is amplitudemodulated at 100 kHz.
Two other design choices involve significant tradeoffs. First, we use variable beam
expanders (Special Optics 53-26-2-10X-Îż) for the lattice beams, sacrificing some stability for flexibility. It turns out that finding the correct balance between density andlattice depth is somewhat difficult so we choose to make changing the beam size lesscumbersome.
58Second, to avoid increasing the number of lattice optics with an additional mirror,
the lattice retroreflector is a dichroic that transmits the imaging beam, and the lensthat collimates the lattice beam before the retroreflector is also the imaging front
lens. This means that the imaging front lenses along the lattice directions are singlets,
significantly limiting the usable f-number.
The left/right lattice and plug imaging axes are therefore ’rough’ imaging axes andare fitted with a compact, non-cooled camera with higher noise and lower quantum
efficiency (pixelfy QE). High-quality imaging occurs on the side and top axes, where
bucket windows allow smaller focal lengths and lower f-numbers. Currently we work
far below the maximum numerical apertures of 0.14 (side) and .9 (bottom): while theside bucket window was originally designed to house a specific microscope objective(5x Mittutoyo Plan APO NIR), mechanical errors in the bucket fabrication meant thatthe magnetic trap center is out of the field of view when the original high resolution
objective is used.
For blocking IR and plug light from imaging pathways, we find that the bestperforming filter is the reflective StopLine notch filter from Semrock, though if maximizing transmission is not a concern then Schott glass is both cheap and effective atblocking 532nm light.
Originally we intended to use LCD waveplates so the same beams could be usedas lattices and ODTs, reducing the mass transport required throughout the system
when ramping up the lattice. Unfortunately after investigating the Mott insulator
lifetime we realized that the nematic liquid crystal waveplates we used for this purpose
have intrinsic intensity noise that heats the sample: they are typically controlled byamplitude-modulating a square wave, with the dynamic range dropping off sharply
above a modulation frequency of 5 kHz. This square wave ends up creating residual
intensity modulation at that frequency of several percent, which rapidly heats the
sample in the lattice, forcing us to return to the traditional configuration of having
separate lattice and ODT beams.
593.2.3

Alignment considerations

Aligning the vertical lattice so that it points along the direction of the field gradient isimportant for preventing excess heating in modulation schemes. This is difficult to dowith high accuracy but rough alignment can be performed using Stern-Gerlach separation of the different spin components in a magnetic field. By applying an RF sweep
and then a magnetic field gradient, the gas is split into two pieces, displaced along thedirection of the gradient. Applying Kapitza-Dirac pulses to the two-component gas
separates each component into 0, ±2~𝑘 momentum modes along the beam direction
for six components in total. The lattice is roughly aligned with the magnetic field
if all six components lie on a line, as shown in Fig. 3-7. Imaging in two horizontal
directions verifies that the beam is aligned along both degrees of freedom.

Figure 3-7: Stern-Gerlach calibration of the vertical lattice angle to lie on the magnetic
coil axis. An rf pulse is applied to place the condensate in a mixture of |𝐹, 𝑚𝐹 ⟩ =|1, −1⟩ and |1, 0⟩ states, then a magnetic field gradient separates the components ofthe mixture. After separation, a Kapitza-Dirac pulse diffracts the cloud into ±2~𝑘components along the lattice direction.

3.3

Data management

Each ’shot’ of an atomic physics experiment is associated with a large amount of
information: the experimental sequence and parameters, associated image files and60derived quantities, and metadata about the nature and purpose of performing that
iteration.
In the current state of the field, most of that information is discarded or rendered
inaccessible over time. Even if sequence files are saved, unless information is explicitly
recorded in a lab book the process of unearthing the records, extracting relevant
information, and associating them with images is sufficiently tedious that it is rarely
performed. Searching old logs in a systematic way is even less feasible – even though
information about earlier experiments may be highly relevant.
Inspired by the success of Cicero Word Generator, an experimental control program written by Aviv Keshet for our lab and now widely used elsewhere [68], wedeveloped the ’Clinamen’ application (screenshot in Figure 3-8) is to store all of thedata associated with an experiment, including information about raw and processed
images, in a structured database so that it can be easily searched and retrieved. It
is built using a standard web application stack: we store data from Cicero Word
Generator and image files into a MySQL relational database, and provide a Django
web application (with user interface built on JQuery) for searching and accessing thedata, and performing image processing.
The table schema is shown in Fig 3-9. Runs of the experiment are associated withvariables and their values, and also with images and various processed images andderived quantities extracted from the raw frames.
One core recordkeeping problem is the association of image files with data about
the experimental sequence. Like many other groups, we use a number of different
cameras with proprietary and mutually incompatible software. In principle thesecameras tend to have APIs so one could write a single piece of custom software for
operating the cameras that also performs recordkeeping and analysis. What we decide
to do instead is to use the image files saved to disk, and then after the fact associate
experimental sequence data with image data using the timestamps of the image files.
Data is inserted into the database after every iteration in Cicero Word Generator– the sequence file, length, etc. are recorded along with the names and values of
relevant variables. However, at the time of insertion the relevant image files may not61Figure 3-8: Sample screenshot of the Clinamen application. Run logs data can besearched by date, sequence name, and variable information, and processing methods
can be assigned to different image types.

yet exist on disk, so we monitor the directories in which image files are stored andassociate incoming files with experimental sequences based on their timestamps.

To facilitate the processing of images we create user-defined image ’types’ such thatevery image of a given type is processed in the same way. This is necessary because
the features of the atomic sample are typically not obvious from raw image files, but
the processing that converts raw frames into, for example, absorption or fluorescence
images depends on the imaging configuration since different configurations may havedifferent numbers of frames in a different order. Therefore, we allow users to define animage type in the sequence description, and to use the web application to associateeach image type with one or more processing methods that can generate either new,processed images (such as a transmission image) or derived quantities (such as a countof the atom number).
62

RunlogInfo

VariableValue

ImageType

Processing
MethodImageinfo

Frameinfo

Processed
Value

RawFrame

Processed
Frame

MethodArgument

TypeROI

Figure 3-9: Table schema for the SQL database. Arrows indicate the type and direction (one-to-many and many-to-many) of relationships. Blue tables are populated
automatically by Clinamen based on communication with Cicero and image files on
disk. Red tables are input by the user using the web application. Green tables are
created by Clinamen in response to user input.

3.4

Environmental stability

Regulating the ambient temperature and humidity is crucial for the success of atomic
physics experiments, and often neglected before making changes to the HVAC system
becomes prohibitively difficult. Stabilizing the environment was one of the major
goals for our recent apparatus upgrade, with a focus on enclosures and individual
temperature control for the experiment and laser tables.
While this dramatically imporoved environmental stability, we still noticed alignment drifts over the period of weeks, as well as some unexplained fluctuations in thesample size. We improved temperature and humidity monitoring by installing the63Weathergoose II, a monitor designed for IT applications (server farms) which madeit straightforward to log dozens of temperature monitors on a long-term basis. By
logging the temperature at eleven different locations as well as the air flow, humidity,
and air conditioning control we were able to identify additional improvements:∙ The most important improvement was to identify temperature gradients that
affect experiment stability even when enough cooling capacity is present. For
example, in Fig. 3-10, on April 9 there is a large temperature increase in someparts of the lab and a large decrease in others, suggesting that cooling capacity is incorrectly distributed in the lab rather than globally insufficient. Whilehigher air velocity reduces temperature gradients due to faster air mixing, itcreates different sources of instability due to vibration and air currents. Once
gradients are identified, however, they can be addressed by redirecting the output of the air conditioners.

∙ We also identified large fluctuations in the humidity, which we addressed by installing a dehumidifier to supplement the existing dehumidification performedby the air conditioners themselves.

∙ While substantially better than before, the environmental stability can still be
improved, especially on days with extreme temperatures, by adding additionalcooling capacity.

3.5

Outlook

Progress in realizing novel Hamiltonians in our apparatus has been slower than expected, due in part to a number of major equipment failures including the implosionof one of our vacuum windows and at least three catastrophic failures of our yellow
laser system. However, we have developed an apparatus that is fast, versatile, and64

reliable, and we believe that we are well-positioned to soon realize topological phasesof lattice fermions as discussed in the next chapter. I look forward to learning about
the exciting discoveries in the years ahead.

Figure 3-10: Sample temperature log from the Weathergoose temperature monitor.
The ambient temperature is monitored at twelve measurement points spread out
across the lab. On Apr 09, some of the sensors report a large increase in temperature while others report a large decrease, indicating that the air temperature is nothomogenized throughout the lab.

65

66

Chapter 4
Bose-Einstein Condensates of Sodium
in Tilted and Shaken Lattices
4.1

Optical dipole potentials

Because cold atoms’ behavior can be so effectively described as that of ideal quantum
particles, studying them resembles starting from a blank slate. One builds up, pieceby piece, the potentials and interactions where complexity will manifest itself. Opticalconfinement is essential for this process – both for trapping the overall atom cloud[69], and for localizing atoms in a lattice so that their continuous degrees of freedom
become discrete [70].
Light that is red-detuned to an atomic transition generates an attractive potential.
The interaction of an atom with an oscillating electric field can be written as:
𝐻 = −𝑒E · d cos(𝜔𝐿 𝑡)(4.1)

For a given pair of states |𝑔⟩ and |𝑒⟩ coupled to the radiation field, the ground stateenergy is shifted by two virtual processes; the atom can go to the excited stateby either absorbing or emitting a photon. If we define the Rabi frequency ~Ω =−𝑒𝐸⟨𝑔|𝑧|𝑒⟩, then this is also the coupling to each dressed state and the perturbation
67

is:
1
𝐻±′ =
2

(︂

0

Ω

Ω 𝜔𝑒𝑔 ± 𝜔𝐿

)︂
.

(4.2)

As long as 𝛿 ≫ Ω the energy shift is proportional to the light intensity:
∆𝐸 ≈

~Ω2
1
1
(
−
)
4 𝜔𝐿 + 𝜔𝑒𝑔 𝜔𝐿 − 𝜔𝑒𝑔(4.3)

The heating rate is proportional to 𝛾/𝛿 2 and so optical traps are typically detuned byhundreds of nanometers. This means that the contribution from the counter-rotatingterm is non-negligible on the order of 30%
We can create periodic potentials by interfering beams at the same frequency
pointing in different directions. If 𝐸1 = 𝐸0 𝜀ˆ𝑒𝑖(k1 ·r−𝜔𝑡) and 𝐸2 = 𝐸0 𝜀ˆ𝑒𝑖(k2 ·r−𝜔𝑡) then
the time averaged intensity is|𝐸|2 = 2𝐸02 (𝑐𝑜𝑠((k1 − k2 ) · r) + 1).

(4.4)

The most common configuration si with a retroreflected beam and 𝑘2 = −𝑘1 , creating
a lattice with periodicity 𝜆/2.

4.2

Optical lattices

4.2.1

Bloch Waves

When the Hamiltonian is periodic – that is, invariant under finite translations by thelattice spacing – its eigenfunctions take on a specific form. Since the Hamiltonian is
a comb of spatial frequencies with evenly spaced teeth, we might expect its eigenfunctions to take on such a form as well. This is the intuition formalized by Bloch’s
theorem [23]:Let 𝑇 = 𝑒𝑖P·a be a unitary translation operator along a lattice basis vector 𝑎, such68

that 𝑇 𝜓(x) = 𝜓(x + a). If T is a symmetry of the Hamiltonian, that is,
𝐻 = 𝑇 𝐻𝑇 †(4.5)

Then eigenfunctions of H are also eigenfunctions of T,:
𝑇 𝜑(x) = 𝑒𝑖k·a 𝜑(x)(4.6)

Rewriting this expression using 𝜑(𝑥) = 𝑒𝑖k·x 𝑢(𝑥),𝑇 𝑢(x) = 𝑒−𝑖k·(x+a) 𝜑(x + a) = 𝑢(x)(4.7)

we see that the eigenstates can be written such that they are products of two parts,
with the first a plane wave and the second a function u(x) with the lattice periodicity.
For the case of an optical lattice, which generates a cosine potential:𝐻=

𝑝2+ 𝑉0 cos2 (𝑘𝑥)
2𝑚

(4.8)

the Hamlitonian takes on a simple form.
|𝑞⟩ = 𝑒𝑖q·x∑︁𝑐𝑛 (q)𝑒𝑖𝑛qL x

(4.9)

𝑛

For a given 𝑞, H is tridiagonal in the 𝑐𝑛 s and straightforward to solve numerically.
Representative solutions are shown in Fig 4-1.
𝐻𝑛,𝑛 = (𝑞 + 𝑛𝑞𝑙 )2 /2𝑚−𝑉0 /4𝐻𝑛,𝑛±1 =4.2.2(4.10)

Kapitza-Dirac diffraction

When setting up an optical lattice, the power and beam waist, and therefore thelocal intensity, are known. Nonetheless there are often small errors in focusing or
69

Figure 4-1: First three energy bands for a lattice of 2𝐸𝑅 (left) and 10𝐸𝑅 (right). For ashallow lattice the dispersion resembles that of a free particle away from the avoided
crossing, corresponding to a sum of many Fourier components and non-negligible
amplitudes for hopping by multiple lattice sites. For a deeper lattice the dispersion
relation is close to a cosine and only next-nearest hopping is significant.

beam overlap and the atoms themselves are the best probe of the lattice depth. The
standard technique for performing this measurement is Kapitza-Dirac diffraction andinvolves applying the lattice potential as a brief pulse. The zero-momentum state is
projected onto the zero-quasimomentum state in each of the different bands of thelattice, which evolve at different energies. After the pulse the atomic wavefunction
will have additional momentum components at ±2~𝑘, ±4~𝑘, etc given by:⟨𝜓|𝑝 = 2𝑛~𝑘⟩ =

∑︁ (︂
𝑖

⟨𝑝 = 2𝑛~𝑘|𝜑𝑖 ⟩𝑒𝑖𝐸𝑖 (0)𝑡)︂⟨𝜑𝑖 |𝑝 = 0⟩ .

(4.11)

Where the 𝜑𝑖 s are the Bloch band wavefunctions. A sample image of Kapitza-Diracdiffraction is shown in Fig 4-2, as is a plot of the calculated time-evolution.

4.2.3

Wannier basis and tight binding

While the Bloch functions diagonalize the Hamiltonian, they are spread out over allof the lattice sites and it is often preferable to work with localized wavefunctions
when considering interactions or tilted lattices. Since the Bloch functions are narrow70Figure 4-2: Kapitza-Dirac diffraction picture after time of flight (top) and calculated
occupancies (bottom). The blue, green, and red curves show the populations of thezeroth, first, and second orders, respectively.
71

combs in momentum space, intuition suggests that a localized function should be abroad sum over Bloch functions in quasimomentum space

𝑤𝑛 (x − xi ) =

√︂

𝑎
2𝜋

∫︁

𝑑q𝑢𝑛𝑞 (x)𝑒−𝑖q·xi(4.12)

These are known as Wannier functions, and because the Bloch functions are only
defined up to a phase factor, there are multiple choices for the Wannier basis. The
naive choice for a localized function around (𝑥 = 0) is to set the phases so that the𝑢(𝑥)s are positive real there and add up constructively. This also turns out to be thecorrect choice (for even bands) after a more rigorous analysis [71].
Conveniently, for deep lattices the Hamiltonian is simple in the Wannier basis:∑︁𝐻=𝜀𝑘 𝑎†𝑘 𝑎𝑘

𝑘

∑︁ ∫︁
=
( 𝑑k𝜀(k)𝑒−𝑖k·(Ri −Rj ) )𝑏†𝑖 𝑏𝑗(4.13)

𝑖𝑗

In other words, given two sites separated by a distance 𝑑 = 𝑅𝑖 − 𝑅𝑗 , the lattice Hamiltonian introduces a hopping amplitude between them proportional to the
Fourier component of the band dispersion 𝜀(𝑘) corresponding to 𝑑. For a deep lattice
the dispersion approaches a sine function so hopping only takes place between nearest
neighbors.
Interactions are also simple in the Wannier basis. The usual pesudopotential
approximation for s-wave scattering 𝑉 = (4𝜋𝑎/~)𝛿(𝑟) gives the following integral,since off-site interactions disappear quickly as the lattice depth increases:𝑈=∫︁

𝑑3 𝑥|𝑤(𝑥)|4The dependence of 𝐽 and 𝑈 on the lattice depth 𝑉0 is shown in Fig 4-3.
72

(4.14)

Figure 4-3: Tunneling rate J and interaction strength U plotted logarithmically as afunction of lattice depth in recoils.

4.3

Superfluid and Mott insulating phases

The combination of tunneling and on-site interactions gives the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian:

𝐻=

∑︁

<𝑖𝑗>

−𝐽𝑎†𝑖 𝑎𝑗 +∑︁𝑖

𝑈 𝑎†𝑖 𝑎𝑖 (𝑎†𝑖 𝑎𝑖 − 1) +∑︁

𝜇(𝑥)𝑎†𝑖 𝑎𝑖(4.15)𝑖where 𝜇 is the local chemical potential in the local density approximation, andthe sum < 𝑖𝑗 > is taken over nearest neighbors. The tunneling and interaction terms
favor states with radically different character. If the first, kinetic term dominates,
then the ground state has all of the particles at zero momentum. The superfluid
nature of this state is apparent by factoring it into a product of local coherent states73with the same phase:

|𝜓⟩ =

∏︁ †𝑘
∏︁ √ †
𝑎𝑖 |0⟩ =(𝑒 𝑛𝑏𝑖 )|0⟩𝑖

(4.16)𝑖

If the second, onsite interaction dominates, then the ground state is a Mott insulator, is a product of Fock states with the same number of particles on each site.

|𝜓⟩ =

4.3.1

∏︁ †𝑛
𝑏𝑖 |0⟩(4.17)

𝑖

Mean-field theory

In between these two extremes the Hamiltonian cannot be solved analytically. We canuse as an ansatz Gutzwiller’s variational wavefunction that has the pure superfluid
and pure Mott insulator as special cases, where the many-body wavefunction again
factorizes as a product of on-site wavefunctions [72]:

|𝜓⟩ =

∏︁
𝑏†2
𝑏†𝑛
(𝑓0 + 𝑓1 𝑏†𝑖 + 𝑓2 √ · · · + 𝑓𝑛 √ )|0⟩2𝑛!
𝑖

(4.18)The interaction and kinetic energies are given by:𝐻𝑖𝑛𝑡 =∑︁𝑛|𝑓𝑛 |2 (𝜇𝑛 + 𝑈 𝑛(𝑛 − 1)/2

𝐻𝑘𝑖𝑛 = −𝑧𝐽|𝑓0⋆ 𝑓1 + · · · +√(4.19)

3𝑓2⋆ 𝑓3 + · · · |2

We can identify the boundary of the Mott insulator phase by considering its
stability with respect to a small perturbation. Let almost all of the amplitude be in𝑛 with the a small fraction 𝛼 in states (𝑛 + 1) and (𝑛 − 1), . Then we expand tosecond order in 𝛼. The Landau theory of phase transitions suggests that the criticalpoint is where the second derivative changes sign:√√𝐸(𝛼) = 𝑧𝐽𝑎2 ( 𝑛 + 𝑛 + 1)2 + 𝑈 𝛼2(4.20)

so the phase transition occurs, in this approximation, at 𝑈/𝐽 = 4𝑛𝑧, where z is74the number of nearest neighbors.

4.3.2

Mott insulator lifetime

In real experiments, of course, the chemical potential varies across the trap so thesystem will be in a combination of Mott and superfluid phases with different occupations. Still, by expanding the cloud in time of flight is possible to observe the decayof coherence across the sample as the lattice depth is increased past about 20𝐸𝑅 , asshown in Fig 4-4.

Figure 4-4: Superfluid to Mott insulator phase transition. In 100𝑚𝑠 the lattice isadiabatically ramped up to its final value, then released from the trap. The sharp
interference peaks in the expanded cloud indicate superfluid coherence and a uniform
phase across the sample.

To demonstrate that the loss of coherence is in fact due to the Mott insulator
phase transition, rather than from heating of the sample caused by the deeper lattice,
and and to characterize the technical heating in our apparatus, we also perform anexperimental sequence where we ramp from the superfluid to the Mott insulator,
then hold the sample for a variable time in the Mott insulator, then ramp back tothe superfluid. The results are shown in Fig 4-5, and coherence mostly disappears
from the sample after 100 ms. This reflects a significant increase from our initial
measurements where vibrations from the cooling fan used for the microwave amplifier
were limiting the lifteime, but it still offers room for improvement. The physics ofthe superfluid-Mott insulator phase transition was first explored in 2002 [73], but it
remains the starting point for studying many different kinds of lattice physics.
75

Figure 4-5: Mott insulator lifetime. The lattice depth is ramped from 8𝐸𝑅 to 22𝐸𝑅
in 100𝑚𝑠, then held for a variable time (the last number in the individual image
captions), then ramped back down to 8𝐸𝑅 in 20𝑚𝑠. The destruction of coherencewith increasing hold time in the Mott insulator occurs as a result of technical heating,typically due to vibrations that shift the phase of the retroreflected lattice beam.

4.3.3

Return of coherence after a rapid quench

Below are the results of a preliminary experiment on the restoration of coherence after
a rapid quench, in the 1D analogue of [74]. We start with a system of ’pancakes’ held
in a deep 1D lattice of 44𝐸𝑅 for 100 ms, where mean-field effects induce dephasing of
the pancake BECs [75]. In 400𝜇𝑠 we rapidly switch the lattice to 13𝐸𝑅 and hold it
there for a variable time before releasing the sample from the trap. Fig 4-6 shows therestoration of coherence as determined by the number of atoms in ±2~𝑘 momentum
components.
These results were initially surprising in two ways: First, the return and lossof coherence occurs much faster than the tunneling timescale at that lattice depth
𝐽 = (2𝜋) × 75Hz; the ‘light cone‘ spreading of correlations observed in [76] happens
on that scale. We expect that this discrepancy can be explained by the large numberof particles in each pancake and the consequent Bose enhancement of tunneling: thetunneling amplitude scales as 𝐽⟨𝑁 ⟩ where ⟨𝑁 ⟩ is the average number of particles
per pancake. Second, the coherence decays quickly again after reappearing. This isreminscent of the revival observed in [77], and we hope that additional theoreticaland experimental work will provide insight into this system.
76

Figure 4-6: Restoration of coherence after a rapid ramp back to a shallow 13 𝐸𝑅
lattice. The fraction of atoms in the ±2~𝑘 momentum components, an indication of
the superfluid coherence of the sample, is plotted as a function of the hold time in theshallow lattice. The coherence undergoes a rapid revival and decay on a timescale
much faster than the tunneling time 𝐽 ≈ 75Hz, indicating the Bose enhancement oftunneling.

4.4

Tilted lattices and Bloch oscillations

The competition between tunneling and on-site interaction produces the Mott insulator phase transition, and to engineer more complex systems it is often useful tointroduce another relevant another energy scale in addition to 𝐽 and 𝑈 . One way
this can be done is to apply a tilt, a uniform gradient potential which offsets thelattice sites by an energy ∆ along one dimension.
Thought of in terms of quasimomentum, atoms in tilted lattices have their quasimomentum increase linearly until they are ’reflected’ by the periodic boundary conditions at the edge of the Brillouin zone. These correspond to Bloch oscillations of
the center of mass in position space.
77For small tilts the clearest treatment of Bloch oscillations is semiclassical [78].
𝑘˙ = ~𝐹
𝑟˙ =

𝜕𝜀
𝜕𝑘

(4.21)For a constant external force in the tight-binding limit,𝑥 − 𝑥0 =2𝐽𝑑cos[(𝑘0 + 𝐹 𝑡)𝑑]𝐹

(4.22)

Alternatively, in the limit of small interactions and strong tilts the Hamiltonianis diagonalized by the Wannier-Stark functions [79],|𝜑(𝑚)⟩ =∑︁

𝐽𝑛−𝑚 (𝑛2𝐽)𝑤(𝑥 − 𝑥𝑛 )∆(4.23)

where the 𝐽𝑖 s are Bessel functions.
The evolution of the momentum distribution is shown in Fig 4-7. In these measurements we turn on a uniform magnetic field using magnetic coils in Helmholtz
configuration, then rapidly turn one of them off. The rationale for this is as follows:
due to the harmonic confinement, the gradient cannot be applied gradually becausethat will simply create an adiabatic shift to the new trap minimum. However, thelarge inductance of the coils means that the rate of change of the gradient is proportional to the voltage across the coil. By switching the coil off, rather than on, it ispossible to switch at the maximum safe voltage for the system without the need toapply a power supply / capacitor combination.

Figure 4-7: Images of Bloch oscillations in a 1D lattice. A tilt potential of ∆ =ℎ × (2kHz) is applied for a variable time ranging from 0 to 2 ms.

78

4.4.1

Dynamical instability

In the presence of interactions Bloch oscillations are damped by a dynamical instability that occurs above a certain critical value of the quasimomentum [80, 81]. One
might expect the sample to be collisionally unstable anywhere above 𝑞 = 0, but collisions must conserve energy and quasimomentum, and the concavity of the dispersion
relation means that for a condensate at low quasimomentum, the particle that gains
energy does not gain enough to compensate for the particle that loses energy. This isshown in Fig 4-8. Above that value, two-body collisions are allowed and the sample
undergoes rapid heating.

Figure 4-8: Rough illustration of the dynamical instability. A sinusoidal dispersion
relation for a deep lattice is shown in blue. The red curve shows the final energy andmomentum from a particle at point (1), provided that a second particle at (1) scattersto a lower-energy state. Since the curve lies below the dispersion relation, there is
no way for this collision process to conserve energy and momentum. The green curveshows the same energy for a particle at point (2). Since it lies above the blue curve, thecollision is allowed provided that the excess energy goes into transverse excitations.
The extension of the curve beyond the boundary reflect so-called ’unklapp’ scattering
processes reflecting the periodicity of the Brillouin zone.

We first observe this effect using an alternate experimental configuration for observing Bloch oscillations, where we create the gradient in a moving frame throughconstant acceleration of the lattice. This is most easily done by using a non-retroreflected79Raman lattice, where the velocity of the lattice is the product of the wavelength andthe difference in frequency, and applying a constant frequency ramp to one of thelattice arms. Because the imaging system and transverse confinement exist in thestationary lab frame, this method has the disadvantage that the cloud can move outof the trap or the field of view in a matter of milliseconds. However, it has the advantage that the tilt can be easily stopped, restarted, and reversed, to observe behavior
at different quasimomenta. For example, in Fig 4-9 we ramp up the quasimomentum
to a target value and then hold it there, rather than letting it continue to increaselinearly as in the case of a constant gradient, to observe the onset of the dynamical
instability.

Figure 4-9: Observation of dynamical instability in a 4𝐸𝑅 Raman lattice. We ramp
up the frequency to a variable final value, then the sample is held there for 2𝑚𝑠 before
release from the trap. Above a critical value of the quasimomentum, there is rapid
heating and loss of the sample. The image captions are arbitrary units proportional
to the value of the quasimomentum before the hold.

80

4.4.2Relaxation to zero-momentum mode

Surprisingly, in further measurements we observe a decay of the cloud down to thezero-quasimomentum mode, even though two-body collisions are forbidden at low
quasimomenta. The experiments shown in Fig. 4-11 were done in a stationary lattice,where we first turn off one of the bias coils to initiate Bloch oscillations, then turn off
the second coil in the pair to ’freeze’ the quasimomentum. The images below are takenwith a cloud initially at the Brillouin zone edge that can decay by either increasingor reducing its quasimomentum, a similar decay occurs when the cloud accelerationends well below the zone boundary and decay occurs only in one direction.

Figure 4-10: Relaxation of Bloch oscillations. A tilt of ∆ = ℎ × (5.5Khz) is applied toincrease the quasimomentum until it reaches the edge of the Brillouin zone, then thetilt is switched off. Images are taken after an increasing hold time on the horizontal
axis. The decay to the zero-quasimomentum mode cannot be explained by simple
two-body collisions.

As in the earlier quench, the decay of the quasimomentum occurs much faster than
the tunneling time scale 𝐽, as shown in Fig. 4-11. What is unknown is the natureof the decay mechanism: since it continues past the point where two-body collisions
should be forbidden, one suspects that it should be a many-body process.
81

Figure 4-11: Decay of occupation of higher-momentum states in lattices of 6 𝐸𝑅
(triangles) and 16 𝐸𝑅 (squares). Bloch oscillations are stopped when the condensate’s
quasimomentum is at the Brillouin zone edge, then after a variable delay the fractionof atoms remaining at the zone edge is plotted as a function of the hold time.

4.5

Gauge fields

By combining the ingredients above we can manipulate the tunneling phases so thatthe atoms in the lattice experience the Hamiltonian of a charged particle in a strong
magnetic field:
Suppose we have an electron moving in a lattice in the 𝑥 − 𝑦 plane with a constantmagnetic field in the 𝑧 direction. If we take the tight-binding Hamiltonian, whichsimply consists of translations by the lattice spacing in the four in-plane directions:
𝐻 = 2𝐽[cos(𝑘𝑥 𝑎) + 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝑘𝑦 𝑎)](4.24)

and account for the magnetic vector potential by making the usual Peierls substitution82

𝑝 → 𝑝 + 𝑒𝑐 𝐴, then for the Coulomb gauge 𝐴 = (0, 𝑥, 0) and 𝜑 = 𝐴𝑒/~𝑐 we have
𝐻 = 2𝐽[𝑎†𝑛,𝑚 𝑎𝑛+1,𝑚 + 𝑎†𝑛+1,𝑚 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 + 𝑒𝑖𝜑 𝑎†𝑛,𝑚 𝑎𝑛,𝑚+1 + 𝑒−𝑖𝜑 𝑎†𝑛,𝑚+1 𝑎𝑛,𝑚 ](4.25)

which corresponds to a magnetic flux through the plaquette of
1
𝐵= 2
𝑎

∮︁

𝐴 · 𝑑𝑙 =~𝜑𝑒𝑎2(4.26)

where the line integral is taken over the straight line connecting the two lattice sites.
So an effective magnetic flux can be introduced by altering the tunneling phasesin the 𝑦 direction so that they depend on 𝑥 [82].
Just as a finite translation in position is equivalent to imprinting a momentumdependent phase, a finite translation in momentum is equivalent to imprinting a
position-dependent phase. So to achieve an effective magnetic field we need a momentum kick in the y direction that is different for the two directions of x hopping.
We can do this by tilting the lattice and then applying an additional Raman
lattice at the frequency of the tilt [59]. This is similar to methods that use a Raman
lattice imposed on lattice of double wells [8, 83–85], and builds upon earlier work that
constructs synthetic magnetic fields using internal states [7] and driven lattices [86].
𝑉𝐾0𝑐𝑜𝑠((k1 − k2 ) · r − 𝜔𝑡)2(︀)︀
𝑉𝐾 = 𝑉𝐾0 𝑒𝑖(k·r−𝜔𝑡) + 𝑒−𝑖(k·r−𝜔𝑡)
𝑉𝐾 =(4.27)

Treating the Raman beams as a perturbation and applying the rotating wave approximation, the additional tunneling term is:
∫︁
∑︁ (︀
)︀
†
𝐻 =
𝑏𝑛,𝑚 𝑏𝑛+1,𝑚 ( 𝑑2 𝑟𝑤(𝑟 − 𝑅𝑛𝑚 )𝑤(𝑟 − 𝑅𝑛𝑚 − 𝑑𝑥 )𝑒𝑖𝑘·𝑟 ) + ℎ.𝑐.
′

𝑛𝑚

′

𝐻 =

∑︁ (︀
𝑛𝑚

𝑏†𝑛,𝑚 𝑏𝑛+1,𝑚 (𝑒𝑖k·R𝑛𝑚

∫︁

𝑖k·r

𝑑𝑥𝑤(𝑟)𝑤(𝑟 − 𝑑𝑥 )𝑒)︀) + ℎ.𝑐.

(4.28)

which is exactly the Harper Hamiltonian. It has the remarkable feature that its band
structure has a non-trivial topology, that is, the integral over the Brillouin zone of83

the Berry curvature
𝑖
𝜈=
2𝜋

∫︁

𝐵𝑍

(⟨𝜕𝑘𝑥 𝑢(𝑘)|𝜕𝑘𝑦 𝑢(𝑘)⟩ − ⟨𝜕𝑘𝑦 𝑢(𝑘)|𝜕𝑘𝑥 𝑢(𝑘)⟩)(4.29)√
can nonzero. For example, for the Raman lattice at 45∘ with period 𝜆/ 2, whichcorresponds to 𝜑 = 𝜋/2, 𝜈 = 1. The integral 𝜈 is a topological invariant of the band
structure known as the Chern number and is always an integer. It is connected to avariety of mathematical objects that are not obviously related (and largely beyond
the understanding of the author). For example, in a similar fashion to how the GaussBonnet theorem relates the integral of the curvature to the number of ’handles’ ofa Riemann surface, the integral of the Berry curvature is a member of the integer
cohomology class 𝐻 2 (𝑋, Z). Moreover, it has a physical manifestation as the integer
Hall conductivity:
𝜎𝑥𝑦 =

𝑒2 ∑︁
𝜈
ℎ

(4.30)

where the sum is over all occupied bands.

Before we can measure the Chern number and other interesting properties of theband structure, we must prevent the sample from rapidly heating in the Raman lattice– as of the writing this reflects the immediate challenge facing our experiment. This
heating is extremely fast and broad – the effect of adding a Raman lattice witih
different Raman detunings is shown in Fig 4-12

4.6

Outlook

If the heating is caused by interaction effects then reducing it may require lowering
the density to less than one particle per site. But applying the Raman lattice toa system of fermions rather than bosons offers the possiblity of filling the band sothat the Fermi level sits in the gap between the first and second bands, reducing thesensitivity of the system to excitations whose energies are small on the scale of the
bandgap. Normally such a system would be uninteresting, but in a strong magnetic
field the full filling of the band makes the measurement of the Hall conductivity
84

more straightforward. Some details have to be worked out about the measurement ofconductivity in a pre-existing tilt, but it appears to be a promising next step.

85

Figure 4-12: Heating of the sample in a 1.6𝐸𝑅 Raman lattice applied for 10𝑚𝑠.
The individual image captions are the Raman detunings, in KHz. Heating occurs at
frequencies within the first band, and also at fractions of the bandgap. Coherence israpidly destroyed on a timescale faster than the tunneling.

86Chapter 5
Outlook
We conclude by speculating upon prospects for future work: the future of fluctuation
measurements, of experiments in our new apparatus, and of quantum simulation atlarge. In the Introduction we argued that over the long term, quantum simulations
will focus increasingly on dynamics and on fermions. Here we consider a few topics
of current interest:

5.1

Dynamics

Our work in the old apparatus has demonstrated that spin and density fluctuations
can be measured quantitatively and used to characterize density and pair correlations(and the analogous thermodynamic response functions) in a variety of Fermi systems.
These measurements have the potential to become a general tool and part of a set ofoverlapping and complementary methods used to characterize the state of quantum
simulations. Fluctuation measurements, Bragg scattering, and Bragg spectroscopy
measure the structure factor (and dynamic susceptibility) 𝑆(𝑘, 𝜔) in different regimes[87, 88], which coincide with the pair and density correlations that are measured
microscopically by measuring double occupancies and individual occupations. As
the space of interesting Hamiltonians that can be experimentally simulated grows,
refinement of these techniques will be essential to characterize the states that result.
Fluctuation techniques offer perhaps the most obvious benefits in dynamical mea87

surements: because the fluctuations measurements are optical and in situ they are
essentially instantaneous, allowing for the ability to measure the evolution of correlations after a rapid quench. Quench experiments have become increasingly popular[74, 76] and one expects that, owing to fundamental limitations to simulating themwith computers, their importance will only grow. In particular, many questions about
ferromagnetism in weakly-bound fermions remain unanswered – while we have demonstrated that there is no ferromagnetic phase transition for free atoms on the upper
branch of a broad Feshbach resonance, it remains an open question whether a phasetransition analogus to the Stoner instability can be realized in similar but slightly
modified systems.

5.2

Quantum magnetism

In recent years the atomic physics research agenda has been propelled in no smallpart by the vision of determining the phase diagram of the Fermi-Hubbard model.
This system continues to be an important target: historically important, conceptuallysimple to realize, and gateway to to a host of interesting questions about quantum
magnetism and criticality [89]. Unfortunately the achievement of long-range orderat the superexchange energy scale 𝐽 2 /𝑈 remains a formidable engineering challengethat after more than a decade nobody quite knows how to solve.
There are a variety of candidate schemes for achieving the requisite entropies,
including use of a bosonic [90], single-component [91] or low-density [11] reservoir, or
doubling the period of a band insulator [92], but it is still unclear which if any of thesewill be successful. In this regard our next-generation apparatus represents a hedged
bet, not committed to any particular cooling scheme but focused on general stability
and versatility to be prepared to seize opportunities should they present themselves.
88

5.3

Topology

In contrast, breakthroughs in the realization of topological physics with ultracold
atoms have been happening at a breakneck rate, including the achievement of important milestones in the the observation of topolgocail states in single-particle band
structures. The group of Tillman Esslinger observed the topological phase transitionin the single-particle band structure of the Haldane model [93], and the group of Immanuel Bloch has measured the (integer) quantized Hall conductivity in the Harper
Hamiltonian, which corresponds to the integrated Berry curvature that constitutes a
topological invariant [8].
New frontiers include the realization of topological spin effects [94], non-Abelian
physics [95, 96], time-reversal symmetric topological insulators [97], and stronglycoupled topological states in the fractional quantum Hall regime [98, 99]. We hopethat in our apparatus we will be able to implement a uniform magnetic flux in asystem of lattice fermions, and make important contributions to this conversation.

89

90

Appendix A
Suppression of Density Fluctuations
in a Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gas
This chapter contains a reprint of Ref. [15]: C Sanner, EJ Su, A Keshet, R Gommers,
Y Shin, W Huang, W Ketterle. Physical review letters 105 (4), 040402

91

PRL 105, 040402 (2010)

Selected for a Viewpoint in Physics
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

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Suppression of Density Fluctuations in a Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gas
Christian Sanner, Edward J. Su, Aviv Keshet, Ralf Gommers, Yong-il Shin, Wujie Huang, and Wolfgang Ketterle
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts 02139, USA(Received 7 May 2010; published 19 July 2010)
We study density profiles of an ideal Fermi gas and observe Pauli suppression of density fluctuations(atom shot noise) for cold clouds deep in the quantum degenerate regime. Strong suppression is observedfor probe volumes containing more than 10 000 atoms. Measuring the level of suppression provides
sensitive thermometry at low temperatures. After this method of sensitive noise measurements has beenvalidated with an ideal Fermi gas, it can now be applied to characterize phase transitions in strongly
correlated many-body systems.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.040402

PACS numbers: 03.75.Ss, 05.30.Fk, 67.85.Lm

Systems of fermions obey the Pauli exclusion principle.
Processes that would require two fermions to occupy thesame quantum state are suppressed. In recent years, several classic experiments have directly observed manifestations of Pauli suppression in Fermi gases. Antibunching
and the suppression of noise correlations are a direct consequence of the forbidden double occupancy of a quantum state. Such experiments were carried out for electrons [1–3], neutral atoms [4,5], and neutrons [6]. In
principle, such experiments can be done with fermionsat any temperature, but in practice low temperatures increase the signal. A second class of (two-body) Pauli
suppression effects, the suppression of collisions, requires
a temperature low enough such that the de Broglie wavelength of the fermions becomes larger than the range of theinteratomic potential and p-wave collisions freeze-out.
Experiments observed the suppression of elastic collisions[7] and of clock shifts in radio frequency spectroscopy[8,9].
Here we report on the observation of Pauli suppressionof density fluctuations. This is, like the suppression ofcollisions between different kinds of fermions [10], amany-body phenomenon which occurs only at even lower
temperatures in the quantum degenerate regime, where theFermi gas is cooled below the Fermi temperature and thelow lying quantum states are occupied with probabilities
close to 1. In contrast, an ideal Bose gas close to quantum
degeneracy shows enhanced fluctuations [11].
The development of a technique to sensitively measuredensity fluctuations was motivated by the connection between density fluctuations and compressibility through thefluctuation-dissipation theorem. In this Letter, we validate
our technique for determining the compressibility by applying it to the ideal Fermi gas. In future work, it could be
extended to interesting many-body phases in optical lattices which are distinguished by their incompressibility [12].
These include the band insulator, Mott insulator, and also
the antiferromagnet for which spin fluctuations, i.e., fluctuations of the difference in density between the two spinstates are suppressed.
0031-9007=10=105(4)=040402(4)Until now, sub-Poissonian number fluctuations of ultracold atoms have been observed only for small clouds ofbosons with typically a few hundred atoms [13–16] anddirectly [17,18] or indirectly [19] for the bosonic Mott
insulator in optical lattices. For fermions in optical lattices,
the crossover to an incompressible Mott insulator phase
was inferred from the fraction of double occupations [20]or the cloud size [21]. Here we report the observation ofdensity fluctuations in a large cloud of fermions, showing
sub-Poissonian statistics for atom numbers in excess of
10 000 per probe volume.
The basic concept of the experiment is to repeatedly
produce cold gas clouds and then count the number ofatoms in a small probe volume within the extended cloud.
Many iterations allow us to determine the average atom
number N in the probe volume and its variance ðNÞ2 . For
independent particles, one expects Poisson statistics, i.e.,ðNÞ2 =hNi ¼ 1. This is directly obtained from thefluctuation-dissipation theorem ðNÞ2 =hNi ¼ nkB TT ,where n is the density of the gas, and T the isothermal
compressibility. For an ideal classical gas T ¼ 1=ðnkB TÞ,p

Ballistic expansion
p
2pF
x

x
2pF

FIG. 1. Phase space diagram of ballistic expansion of a harmonically trapped Fermi gas. Ballistic expansion conserves
phase space density and shears the initially occupied sphericalarea into an ellipse. In the center of the cloud, the local Fermi
momentum and the sharpness of the Fermi distribution are scaledby the same factor, keeping the ratio of local temperature to
Fermi energy constant. The same is true for all points in the
expanded cloud relative to their corresponding unscaled in-trap
points.

040402-1

Ó 2010 The American Physical Society

PRL 105, 040402 (2010)

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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

and one retrieves Poissonian statistics. For an ideal Fermi
gas close to zero temperature with Fermi energy EF , T ¼
3=ð2nEF Þ, and the variance ðNÞ2 is suppressed below
Poissonian fluctuations by the Pauli suppression factor
3kB T=ð2EF Þ. All number fluctuations are thermal, as indicated by the proportionality of ðNÞ2 to the temperaturein the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Only for the idealclassical gas, where the compressibility diverges as 1=T,
one obtains Poissonian fluctuations even at zerotemperature.
The counting of atoms in a probe volume can be donewith trapped atoms, or after ballistic expansion. Ballistic
expansion maintains the phase space density and therefore
the occupation statistics. Consequently, density fluctuations are exactly rescaled in space by the ballistic expansion factors as shown in Fig. 1 [22,23]. Note that this
rescaling is a unique property of the harmonic oscillator
potential, so future work on density fluctuations in opticallattices must employ in-trap imaging. For the present work,
we chose ballistic expansion. This choice increases thenumber of fully resolved bins due to optical resolution
and depth of field, it allows adjusting the optimum opticaldensity by choosing an appropriate expansion time, and it
avoids image artifacts at high magnification.
We first present our main results, and then discuss
important aspects of sample preparation, calibration ofabsorption cross section, data analysis and corrections forphoton shot noise. Figure 2(a) shows an absorption imageof an expanding cloud of fermionic atoms. The probe
volume, in which the number of atoms is counted, ischosen to be 26 m in the transverse directions, and extends through the entire cloud in the direction of the line ofsight. The large transverse size avoids averaging of fluctuations due to finite optical resolution. From 85 such images, after careful normalization [24], the variance in themeasured atom number is determined as a function of
position. After subtracting the photon shot noise contribution, a 2D image of the atom number variance ðNÞ2 isobtained. For a Poissonian sample (with no suppression offluctuations), this image would be identical to an absorption image showing the number of atoms per probe volume. This is close to the situation for the hottest cloud (thetemperature was limited by the trap depth), whereas thecolder clouds show a distinct suppression of the atom
number variance, especially in the center of the cloud
where the local T=TF is smallest.
In Fig. 3, profiles of the variance are compared totheoretical predictions [25,26]. Density fluctuations atwave vector q are proportional to the structure factor
Sðq; TÞ. Since our probe volume (transverse size 26 m)
is much larger than the inverse Fermi wave vector of the
expanded cloud (1=qF ¼ 1:1 m), Sðq ¼ 0; TÞ has been
integrated along the line of sight for comparison with theexperimental profiles. Within the local density approximation, Sðq ¼ 0; TÞ at a given position in the trap is the
binomial variance nk ð1  nk Þ integrated over all momenta,
where the occupation probability nk ðk; ; TÞ is obtained
from the Fermi-Dirac distribution with a local chemical
potential  determined by the shape of the trap. Figure 4
shows the dependence of the atom number variance on
atom number for the hot and cold clouds. A statisticalanalysis of the data used in the figure is in [24].
The experiments were carried out with typically 2:5 
106 6 Li atoms per spin state confined in a round crossed
dipole trap with radial and axial trap frequencies !r ¼
2  160 s1 and !z ¼ 2  230 s1 corresponding toan in-trap Fermi energy of EF ¼ kB  2:15 K. The sam2

/1000

FIG. 2 (color online). Comparison of density images to variance images. For Poissonian fluctuations, the two images at agiven temperature should be identical. The variance images wereobtained by determining the local density fluctuations from a setof 85 images taken under identical conditions. (a) Two dimensional image of the optical density of an ideal Fermi gas after
7 ms of ballistic expansion. The noise data were taken bylimiting the field of view to the dashed region of interest,
allowing for faster image acquisition. (b) For the heated sample,
variance and density pictures are almost identical, implying only
modest deviation from Poissonian statistics. (c) Fermi suppression of density fluctuations deep in the quantum degenerate
regime manifests itself through the difference between densityand variance picture. Especially in the center of the cloud, there
is a large suppression of density fluctuations. The varianceimages were smoothed over 6  6 bins. The width of images(b) and (c) is 2 mm.

5 (a)

0

0

(b)

(c)

100
Position (bins)

FIG. 3. Comparison of observed variances (black dots) with atheoretical model (black line) and the observed atom number(gray), at three different temperatures (a, b, and c), showing 50,
40, and 15% suppression. Noise thermometry is implemented byfitting the observed fluctuations, resulting in temperatures T=TF
of 0:23  :01, 0:33  :02, and 0:60  :02. This is in good
agreement with temperatures 0:21  :01, 0:31  :01, and 0:6 :1 obtained by fitting the shape of the expanded cloud [32]. The
quoted uncertainties correspond to 1 standard deviation and are
purely statistical.

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Atom number variance

PRL 105, 040402 (2010)

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

bin, the atom number variance ðNÞ2 is obtained by subtracting the known photon shot noise from the variance inthe optical density ðODÞ2 [24]:

4000

1
1
2

ðNÞ2 ¼ ðODÞ2 
2
hN
hN
i
A
1
2i

2000

0

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0

2000

4000

Atom number

FIG. 4. Atom number variance vs average atom number. For
each spatial position, the average atom number per bin and its
variance were determined using 85 images. The filled and open
circles in the figure are averages of different spatial bin positions
with similar average atom number. For a hot cloud at T=TF ¼
0:6 (filled circles), the atom number variance is equal to theaverage atom number (dotted line, full Poissonian noise) in thespatial wings where the atom number is low. The deviation fromthe linear slope for a cold cloud at T=TF ¼ 0:21 (open circles) isdue to Pauli suppression of density fluctuations. There is also
some suppression at the center of the hot cloud, where the atom
number is high. The solid and dashed lines are quadratic fits forthe hot and cold clouds to guide the eye.

ple was prepared by laser cooling followed by sympathetic
cooling with 23 Na in a magnetic trap. 6 Li atoms in thehighest hyperfine state were transferred into the opticaltrap, and an equal mixture of atoms in the lowest two hyperfine states was produced. The sample was then evaporatively cooled by lowering the optical trapping potential ata magnetic bias field B ¼ 320  5 G where a scattering
length of 300 Bohr radii ensured efficient evaporation.
Finally, the magnetic field was increased to B ¼ 520  5 G,
near the zero crossing of the scattering length. Absorption
images were taken after 7 ms of ballistic expansion.
We were careful to prepare all samples with similar
cloud sizes and central optical densities to ensure thatthey were imaged with the same effective cross section
and resolution. Hotter clouds were prepared by heating thecolder cloud using parametric modulation of the trapping
potential. For the hottest cloud this was done near 520 G toavoid excessive evaporation losses.
Atomic shot noise dominates over photon shot noise
only if each atom absorbs several photons. As a result,the absorption images were taken using the cycling transition to the lowest lying branch of the 2 P3=2 manifold.
However, the number of absorbed photons that could be
tolerated was severely limited by the acceleration of theatoms by the photon recoil, which Doppler shifts the atoms
out of resonance. Consequently, the effective absorption
cross section depends on the probe laser intensity andduration. To remove the need for nonlinear normalization
procedures, we chose a probe laser intensity corresponding
to an average of only 6 absorbed photons per atom during a
4 s exposure. At this intensity, about 12% of the 6 Li
saturation intensity, the measured optical density was
20% lower than its low-intensity value [24]. For each

(1)Here, hN1 iðhN2 iÞ are the average photon numbers per bin ofarea A in the image with (without) atoms and  is theabsorption cross section.
The absorption cross section is a crucial quantity in theconversion factor between the optical density and thenumber of detected atoms. For the cycling transition, theresonant absorption cross section is 2:14  1013 m2 .
Applying the measured 20% reduction mentioned above
leads to a value of 1:71  1013 m2 . This is an upper limit
to the cross section due to imperfections in polarization andresidual line broadening. An independent estimate of theeffective cross section of 1:48  1013 m2 was obtained bycomparing the integrated optical density to the number of
fermions necessary to fill up the trap to the chemical
potential. The value of the chemical potential was obtained
from fits to the ballistic expansion pictures that allowed
independent determination of the absolute temperature andthe fugacity of the gas. We could not precisely assess theaccuracy of this value of the cross section, since we did not
fully characterize the effect of a weak residual magnetic
field curvature on trapping and on the ballistic expansion.
The most accurate value for the effective cross section wasdetermined from the observed atom shot noise itself. The
atom shot noise in the wings of the hottest cloud is
Poissonian, and this condition determines the absorption
cross section. Requiring that the slope of variance of theatom number ðNÞ2 vs atom number N is unity (see Fig. 4)
results in a value of ð1:50  0:12Þ  1013 m2 for theeffective cross section in good agreement with the two
above estimates.
The spatial volume for the atom counting needs to belarger than the optical resolution. For smaller bin sizes (i.e.,
small counting volumes), the noise is reduced since thefinite spatial resolution and depth of field blur the absorption signal. In our setup, the smallest bin size without
blurring was determined by the depth of field, since thesize of the expanded cloud was larger than the depth offield associated with the diffraction limit of our opticalsystem. We determined the effective optical resolution bybinning the absorption data over more and more pixels of
the CCD camera, and determining the normalized central
variance ðNÞ2 =N vs bin size [24]. The normalized variance increased and saturated for bin sizes larger than
26 m (in the object plane), and this bin size was usedin the data analysis. We observe the same suppression
ratios for bin sizes as large as 40 m, corresponding tomore than 10 000 atoms per bin.
For a cold fermion cloud, the zero temperature structure
factor SðqÞ becomes unity for q > 2qF . This reflects the040402-3

PRL 105, 040402 (2010)

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

fact that momentum transfer above 2qF to any particle will
not be Pauli suppressed by occupation of the final state. In
principle, this can be observed by using bin sizes smaller
than the Fermi wavelength, or by Fourier transforming the
spatial noise images. For large values of q, Pauli suppression of density fluctuations should disappear, and the noise
should be Poissonian. However, our imaging system loses
its contrast before q  2qF [24].
Observation of density fluctuations, through thefluctuation-dissipation theorem, determines the productof temperature and compressibility. It provides an absolute
thermometer, as demonstrated in Fig. 3 if the compressibility is known or is experimentally determined from theshape of the density profile of the trapped cloud [17,27].
Because variance is proportional to temperature for T 
TF , noise thermometry maintains its sensitivity at very low
temperature, in contrast to the standard technique of fitting
spatial profiles.
Density fluctuations lead to Rayleigh scattering of light.
The differential cross section for scattering light of wave
vector k by an angle  is proportional to the structure factor
SðqÞ, where q ¼ 2k sinð=2Þ [26]. In this work, we havedirectly observed the Pauli suppression of density fluctuations and therefore SðqÞ < 1, implying suppression of lightscattering at small angles (corresponding to values of q
inversely proportional to our bin size). How are the absorption images affected by this suppression? Since thephoton recoil was larger than the Fermi momentum of the
expanded cloud, large-angle light scattering is not suppressed. For the parameters of our experiment, we estimatethat the absorption cross section at the center of a T ¼ 0
Fermi cloud is reduced by only 0.3% due to Pauli blocking[28]. Although we have not directly observed Pauli suppression of light scattering, which has been discussed forover 20 years [28–30], by observing reduced density fluctuations we have seen the underlying mechanism for suppression of light scattering.
In conclusion, we have established a sensitive techniquefor determining atomic shot noise and observed the suppression of density fluctuations in a quantum degenerate
ideal Fermi gas. This technique is promising for thermometry of strongly correlated many-body systems and forobserving phase-transitions or cross-overs to incompressible quantum phases.
We acknowledge Joseph Thywissen and Markus Greiner
for useful discussions. This work was supported by NSF
and the Office of Naval Research, AFOSR (through the
MURI program), and under Army Research Office grant
no. W911NF-07-1-0493 with funds from the DARPA
Optical Lattice Emulator program.
Note added in proof.—Results similar to ours are reported in Ref. [31].

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040402-4

Suppression of Density Fluctuations in a Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gas:
Supplementary Information

EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS

Optical density

To accurately measure the atom number variance it isnecessary to eliminate patterns in the absorption images
whose ﬂuctuations increase the observed noise. Weakreﬂections of the probe beam from the walls of the glass
cell and from optical elements in the imaging system caninterfere with the probe beam itself, leading to spatial
ﬂuctuations in its intensity proﬁle. To reduce interference
fringes and ensure uniform illumination, the central areaof the probe beam is imaged onto the sample througha 2 mm aperture. Even though the residual fringes are
small, there are two signiﬁcant eﬀects of inhomogeneous
illumination which must be addressed.
First, if the time elapsed between the image with atoms
and the reference image without atoms is too large, mechanical vibrations of the optics will cause the intensity
proﬁle of the probe to change between the two images,
creating artifacts in the absorption image. To reduce
this eﬀect, we operate our CCD in fast kinetics mode,with a time interval ≈ 500µs between exposures. Since
there is no longer enough time for the atoms to exit theframe between images, before taking the reference image
we optically pump the atoms from the |1⟩ state to the |6⟩state, and from the |2⟩ state to the |5⟩ state (|1⟩ refers
to the lowest hyperﬁne state, etc.), by exciting them tothe mJ = 1/2 excited state manifold. At the magnetic
ﬁelds used in the experiment, these levels are separated
in frequency from the |2⟩ state used for imaging by ≈ 2
GHz and contribute negligibly to resonant imaging.
Second, if the average probe intensity is too high, theatoms subjected to higher intensities will have a lower
eﬀective cross-section, and so any spatial ﬂuctuations in
the beam intensity will be ‘imprinted’ onto the absorption images. As a result, in our experiment we use aprobe beam with maximum intensity of 0.12 of the saturation intensity Isat =2.54 mW/cm2 , where these eﬀects
are relatively small. The variation of optical density withintensity is shown in Fig. 1.
Additionally, the exposure time must be kept very
short to prevent the atoms from moving between pixels during the exposure. The expected motion of atoms
during the 4 µs exposure is on the order of 1 µm, muchsmaller than the eﬀective pixel size.

1.4

1.2

1
0.05

0

Probe laser intensity (I / ISAT)
FIG. 1: Determination of the absorption cross section. The
observed optical density decreases with increasing probe lightintensity. The line is a quadratic fit to the data. The reduction of the cross section is mainly due to the Doppler
effect caused by acceleration of the atoms by radiation pressure; a smaller reduction results from the partial saturation of
the optical transition. At the probe light intensity chosen inthis study (shaded bar), the number of photons absorbed per
atoms is about 6. The decrease of the cross section is slightly
larger than that predicted by simple models.

must ﬁrst eliminate the eﬀect of ﬂuctuations in the total
atom number between experimental cycles. Initially, we
select the 85 images used in the analysis from a larger
group of ≈ 150 images, using an automated procedure tochoose the images whose total atom numbers are closest
to the center of the distribution. A very small number ofimages (< 1%) are manually excluded because of obvious
artifacts in the frame due to dust particles or other large
perturbations. Then, we subtract a ﬁtted proﬁle fromeach OD image before computing the variance. Initially
we subtracted a ﬁtted 2D Thomas-Fermi proﬁle, but wereplaced this with a Gaussian ﬁt which had an insignificant eﬀect on the variances, while taking considerably
less computation time.
We then compute the variance in optical density ateach position. That variance has contributions from photon and atom shot noise, given by the following formula:(∆(OD))2 =NOISE DETERMINATIONIn this experiment the local atom number variance isdetermined by comparing the measured number of atoms
in the same bin across a series of images. To do this, we

0.1

1
1
σ2
+
+ 2 (∆Natom )2⟨N1 ⟩ ⟨N2 ⟩ A(1)This equation holds bin by bin: N1 is the average numberof photons measured in a given bin position for the image with atoms, and N2 is the average number of photons
measured in that bin for the reference image. (∆Natom )2is the variance in atom number for that bin, σ is the2

Atom number variance

(a)

(b)

6000

6000

4000

4000

2000

2000

0

0

0

2000

4000

0

Atom number

2000

4000

Atom number

FIG. 2: Atom number variance vs. atom number. (a) Data for all of the resolution elements is plotted. Red points are from the
hot cloud at T /TF = 0.6, blue points from the cold cloud at T /TF = 0.21. There is significant scatter in the variance data, andthere are many “cold” pixels which actually have higher variance than their corresponding “hot” pixel. (b) The red and blue
shaded regions indicate the expected 2σ scatter in sample variance that is expected due to atom and photon counting statistics.
The large circles are variance data averaged over pixels with similar atom number for hot (red) and cold (blue) cloud. The bars
show the measured 2σ scatter of the data points. The measured scatter agrees very well with the expected scatter, indicatingthat the scatter of the data is fully accounted for by counting statistics. Negative values of the observed atom number varianceresult from the subtraction of photon shot noise.

Atom number variance

5000

0

0

Position (bins)

100

FIG. 3: Determination of profiles of the atom number variancefor a cold cloud. For each bin, the total photon count is determined, and its contribution (red) to the total variance of the
optical density (blue) is subtracted. The obtained atom number variance (green) is compared to the average atom number(black). The displayed trace reveals 50% noise suppression in
the center of the cloud. The apparently high suppression of
atom variation in the wings is a statistical fluctuation. Fig. 2
shows that the suppression is monotonic in atomic density.

absorption cross section, and A is the eﬀective bin area.
The atom number variance is isolated by calculating theﬁrst two photon shot noise terms and subtracting them.
The analysis used in the paper also subtracts contributions from detector read noise and photon shot noise in
the dark ﬁeld, but these are fairly small contributions.
The determination of N1 and N2 depends on the CCD
gain, which is measured to be 1.18 (counts/electron) from≈ 240 pairs of images without atoms, employing the assumption that the detector statistics are Poissonian. After the subtraction of photon shot noise (and technicalnoise), the remaining variance in optical density is dueto the atom number variance. Fig. 3 shows the contributions of photon and atom number variance to the overallnoise in optical density.
The large scatter of the measured atom number variance, as depicted in Fig. 2, is not primarily due to technical noise, but instead a statistical property of the sampling distribution of the variance. The shaded areas arederived from theoretical values for the variance of thesample variance. This is given by
Var(Var(N )) =(m − 1)(m − 3)(m − 1)2
µ4 −
µ2
m3
m3

(2)

where m is the number of observations in each sample.
The moments µ2 and µ4 are the central moments of the
population distribution. For a Poisson distribution, µ2 =⟨N ⟩3 and µ4 = ⟨N ⟩(1 + 3⟨N ⟩), and for m, ⟨N ⟩ ≫ 1,
this expression reduces to 2⟨N ⟩2 /m. Fig. 2b shows the3comparison between the expected and measured variancein the sample variance.
IMAGING SYSTEM CHARACTERIZATIONThe blurring of adjacent pixels due to ﬁnite opticalresolution eﬀectively decreases the measured atom number variance. This eﬀect is avoided by binning the datausing a suﬃciently large bin size (Fig. 5). In our experiment, this bin size is determined by the extension of
the cloud along the optical axis, which is much larger
than the depth of focus of the diﬀraction limit of the lenssystem.
Atom noise allows us to characterize the transfer function of our imaging system. Fig. 4 shows the average
power spectrum (modulus squared of the spatial Fouriertransform) of the optical density images. Because theFourier transform of uncorrelated ﬂuctuations is ﬂat, thedeviation from ﬂatness of the density noise corresponds
to blurring induced by the lens, barring the central peakcorresponding to the shape of the cloud. For wavevectors
q much larger than the resolution limit of the detection
scheme, the atom number ﬂuctuations are no longer imaged, and the power spectrum is the photon shot noise.
For our experiment this happens for q < qF . Comparison of the power spectra for the cold and the hot cloudshows, at small values of q, a 50% suppression, consistent with the results obtained using spatial bins. If theimaging system still had contrast at q > 2qF , we would
expect the ratio of the power spectra to approach unity,
since momentum transfer q > 2qF to a Fermi cloud has
negligible Pauli suppression.

4Power (arb units)

(a)
200
100
0

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

q / qF
(b)

(c)

-1
0

qy / qF
1-1

0

1

qx / qF
FIG. 4: (a) Radially averaged power spectra of optical density
images for hot (solid line) and cold (dashed line) samples (b)Power spectrum of cold sample (arbitrary units) (c) Power
spectrum of hot sample (arbitrary units). A constant offset isadded to the power spectrum for the hot sample to equalize
the levels of photon shot noise.

1

Var(N)/N

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0

10

20

30

40

Bin size (μm)
FIG. 5: Observed atom number variance versus bin size forheated (dashed line) and cold (solid line) samples, normalized
to 1 for Poissonian statistics. A plateau is reached when theblurring of the bins due to finite optical resolution is negligible.

100

Appendix B
Speckle imaging of spin fluctuations
in a strongly interacting Fermi gas
This chapter contains a reprint of Ref. [16]: C Sanner, EJ Su, A Keshet, W Huang,
J Gillen, R Gommers, W Ketterle, Physical review letters 106 (1), 010402

101

PRL 106, 010402 (2011)

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

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Speckle Imaging of Spin Fluctuations in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
Christian Sanner, Edward J. Su, Aviv Keshet, Wujie Huang, Jonathon Gillen, Ralf Gommers, and Wolfgang Ketterle
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts 02139, USA(Received 8 October 2010; revised manuscript received 10 December 2010; published 6 January 2011)
Spin fluctuations and density fluctuations are studied for a two-component gas of strongly interacting
fermions along the Bose-Einstein condensate-BCS crossover. This is done by in situ imaging of dispersive
speckle patterns. Compressibility and magnetic susceptibility are determined from the measured fluctuations. This new sensitive method easily resolves a tenfold suppression of spin fluctuations below shotnoise due to pairing, and can be applied to novel magnetic phases in optical lattices.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.010402

PACS numbers: 05.30.Fk, 03.75.Ss, 67.85.Lm

One frontier in the field of ultracold atoms is the realization of quantum systems with strong interactions andstrong correlations. Many properties of strongly correlated
systems cannot be deduced from mean density distributions. This has drawn interest toward novel ways of probing cold atoms, e.g., via rf spectroscopy [1,2], Bragg andRaman scattering [3], interferometric methods [4,5], andby recording density correlations [6–8]. Further insight
into quantum systems is obtained by looking not only at
expectation values, but also at fluctuations. Several recent
studies looked at density fluctuations, either of bosons
around the Mott insulator transition [9–11], or of a gas ofnoninteracting fermions [12,13].
In this Letter, we extend the study of fluctuations ofultracold gases in several ways. First, we introduce thetechnique of speckle imaging as a simple and highly
sensitive method to characterize fluctuations. Second, weapply it to a two-component Fermi gas across the BoseEinstein condensate (BEC)-BCS crossover. Third, we directly measure fluctuations in the magnetization, i.e., thedifference of the densities in the two different spin components, bypassing the need to measure the individual
densities separately.
Our work is motivated by the prospect of realizing wideclasses of spin Hamiltonians using a two-component gas ofultracold atoms in an optical lattice [14,15]. An important
thermodynamic quantity to characterize two-component
systems is the spin susceptibility, which provides a clear
signature of phase transitions or crossovers involving theonset of pairing or magnetic order [16–19]. At a ferromagnetic phase transition the susceptibility diverges, whereas
in a transition to a paired or antiferromagnetic phase thesusceptibility becomes exponentially small in the ratio of
the pair binding energy (or antiferromagnetic gap) to thetemperature. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem relates
response functions to fluctuations, consequently the spin
susceptibility can be determined by measuring the fluctuations in the relative density of the two spin components.
In our experiment, we image the atom clouds using lightdetuned from resonance so that each atom’s real
0031-9007=11=106(1)=010402(4)polarizability, which contributes to the refractive index, ismuch larger than its imaginary polarizability, which contributes to absorption. Since the detunings for the two spinstates are different, spin fluctuations lead to fluctuations in
the local refractive index, resulting in phase shifts of theimaging light that vary randomly in space. We measurethese phase shifts by imaging the resulting speckle
patterns.
These speckle patterns are created by propagation,
which converts the spatially varying phase shifts of theimaging light into an intensity pattern on our detector
without the use of a phase plate. Spin and density fluctuations occur on all spatial scales down to the interatomic
separation; the smallest observable fluctuations have awavelength equal to the imaging system’s maximum resolution. In our system that length has a Rayleigh range, andhence a depth of field, smaller than the cloud size, so therecorded image is necessarily modified by propagation
effects. Propagation mixes up amplitude and phase signals[Fig. 1]. This can be easily seen in the case of a phasegrating, which creates an interference pattern further
downstream; after propagating for a distance equal to theRayleigh range of the grating spacing, the imprinted phaseis converted into an amplitude pattern. This feature of
speckle makes our imaging technique both simple androbust. It is insensitive against defocusing, and allows us
to image fluctuations of the real part of the refractive index(i.e., a phase signal) without a phase plate or other Fourier
optics.
Similar physics is responsible for laser speckle when arough surface scatters light with random phases [20], andoccurs when a Bose-Einstein condensate with phase fluctuations develops density fluctuations during expansion[21], or when a phase-contrast signal is turned into an
amplitude signal by deliberate defocusing [22].
The experiments were performed with typically 106 6 Li
atoms in each of the two lowest hyperfine states j1i and j2i
confined in an optical dipole trap oriented at 45 to theimaging axis with radial and axial trap frequencies !r ¼
2  108:9ð6Þ s1 and !z ¼ 2  7:75ð3Þ s1 . For the010402-1

Ó 2011 The American Physical SocietyTransmission image variance (arb. units)

PRL 106, 010402 (2011)d

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

2f

2f

0
0

50

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100

150

Defocus distance d (µm)

FIG. 1. Simulation of propagation effects after light has passed
through a Poissonian phase noise object. Shown are the variancemeasured in the amplitude or in-phase quadrature (black line)
and the out-of-phase quadrature (gray line) as a function of
defocus distance, for an imaging system with a numericalaperture of 0.14. Within a distance less than 5% of our cloudsize, noise becomes equally distributed between the two quadratures and the variances in transmission and phase-contrast
images become the same. (Top inset) For small phase fluctuations, an in-focus phase noise object gives no amplitude contrast,
but when it is out of focus it does. (Bottom inset) Sample
intensity patterns for a defocused phase object.

samples imaged at 527 G, the sample preparation was
similar to that described in [13], with a temperature of
0:14ð1ÞTF . The samples imaged at other magnetic fields
were prepared in a similar fashion, except that evaporation
was performed at 1000 G to a final temperature of T ¼
0:13ð1ÞTF before ramping the magnetic field over 1.5 s toits final value. The temperature at 1000 G was determinedby fitting a noninteracting Thomas-Fermi distribution intime of flight. The temperatures at other points in the
crossover were related to that value assuming an isentropic
ramp, using calculations presented in [23]. Using thismethod we obtain temperatures of 0:13ð1ÞTF at 915 G,
0:19ð1ÞTF at 830 G, and 0:19ð3ÞTF at 790 G where additional evaporation was performed to achieve a central
optical density similar to that at the other magnetic fields.
The extent of the cloud along the imaging direction was
135 m, much larger than the Rayleigh range of 8 m forour imaging system with a NA of 0.14.
The superfluid to normal phase boundary was determined by measuring condensate fraction [Fig. 2] using
the standard magnetic field sweep technique [24,25]. For
this, the magnetic field was rapidly switched to 570 G totransfer atom pairs to more deeply bound pairs (molecules)
which survive ballistic expansion. For resonant imaging of
the molecules, the field was ramped back to 790 G over
10 ms. The condensate fraction was determined by fitting
the one-dimensional density profiles with a bimodal
distribution.

FIG. 2. Measured condensate fraction as a function of dimensionless interaction strength 1=ðkF aÞ. Insets show typical images
from which the condensate fraction was extracted by fitting abimodal distribution. The dashed line is a sigmoidal fit to guidethe eye.

As previously described, propagation converts spatial
fluctuations in the refractive index into amplitude fluctuations on the detector. For different choices of the probe
light frequency, the two atomic spin states will have different real polarizabilities and the local refractive index will
be a different linear combination of the (line-of-sight integrated) column densities n1 and n2 . To measure the susceptibility we choose a probe light frequency exactly
between the resonances for states j1i and j2i, so that thereal polarizabilities are opposite and the refractive index is
proportional to the magnetization (n1  n2 ). The intensity
fluctuations on the detector after propagation are consequently proportional to the fluctuations in magnetization.
Since a refractive index proportional to (n1 þ n2 ) occurs
only in the limit of infinite detuning, we measure thefluctuations in the total density by exploiting the fact thatthe fluctuations in total density can be inferred from thefluctuations in two different linear combinations of n1 andn2 . For convenience, we obtain the second linear combination using a detuning that has the same value, but opposite sign for state j2i, and therefore three times the value forstate j1i. With this detuning, we record images of thefluctuations in (n1 =3 þ n2 ).
In principle, this information can be obtained by taking
separate absorption images on resonance for states j1i andj2i. However, the images would have to be taken on a timescale much faster than that of atomic motion and there
would be increased technical noise from the subtraction oflarge numbers. The use of dispersive imaging has the
additional advantage over absorption in that the numberof scattered photons in the forward direction is enhanced
by superradiance. As a result, for the same amount ofheating, a larger number of signal photons can be collected[26]. This is crucial for measuring atomic noise, which
requires the collection of several signal photons per atom.
The choice of detuning between the transitions of the twostates has the important feature that the index of refraction
for an equal mixture fluctuates around zero, avoiding any
lensing and other distortions of the probe beam. This is not

010402-2

PRL 106, 010402 (2011)

The observed ratio of 2 =2þ ¼ 1:56ð14Þ reflects excess
noise contributing to 2þ due to residual systematic dispersive effects and is accounted for by setting c0 =c ¼
pﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃ
1:8=1:56. For high temperatures, the atomic noise of thenoninteracting gas approaches shot noise; for lower temperatures we observe a reduction in noise due to Pauliblocking as in our previous work [13]. With our new
method, we easily discern spin fluctuations with a varianceof less than 10% of atom shot noise.
The fluctuation-dissipation theorem connects the variances ½ðN1  N2 Þ2 and ½ðN1 þ N2 Þ2 to the susceptibility~ and the compressibility ~ via ½ðN1  N2 Þ2 ¼~ and ½ðN1 þ N2 Þ2 ¼ 3N=2ðT=TF Þ~ with3N=2ðT=TF Þ
N ¼ N1 þ N2 and T=TF being the temperature measured
in units of the Fermi temperature TF . Recomposing thevariances from the two experimentally accessible
linear combinations these relations become 2 =Nc2 ¼~
3=2ðT=TF Þand
9=42þ =Nc02  1=42 =Nc2 ¼
. The constants c and c0 are determined using
3=2ðT=TF Þ~
the noise measurements at 527 G for a noninteracting~¼
Fermi gas for which ~ ¼ 1 þ OððT=TF Þ2 Þ. This
analysis ignores line-of-sight integration corrections.
Figure 4 shows the spin susceptibility, the compressibility, and the ratio between the two quantities for the interacting mixtures as the interaction strength is varied throughthe BEC-BCS crossover. The susceptibility and compressibility reproduce the expected qualitative behavior: for the
sample at unitarity, where the transition temperature issufficiently high that a sizable portion of the sample issuperfluid, and for the sample on the BEC side, the spin
susceptibility is strongly suppressed relative to the compressibility. This reflects the fact that the atoms form bound
1/kF a1.2

100 µm8

1/(kF a)= ∞

6
4
2
0

5

10
15
20
25
Pixels (1 pixel = 2.6 µm)

30

1/kF a
-1.0

−4

x 10

∞

-1.5

1.0 0

1/kF a
-1.0

∞

-1.5

1.0 0

-1.0

-1.5

4

1.0
0.8
3

0.6

0.0

2

1

0.2

1/(kF a)= 0

3

0.6
0.4

0.4

4

κ / κ0

χ/κ

0.8

0.2

5

OD Variance

OD Variance

−4

1.0 0

1.0

Optical Density

0.6
0.4
0.2
0

∞

χ / χ0the case for other choices of detuning, and indeed, we
observe some excess noise in those images (see below).
At the detunings chosen, 10% residual attenuation is observed, some due to off-resonant absorption, some due todispersive scattering of light out of the imaging system bysmall scale density fluctuations. The contribution to thevariance of the absorption signal relative to the dispersive
signal scales as ð2Þ2 =2  0:006 and can be neglected in
the interpretation of the data.
The noise analysis procedure was nearly identical to that
performed in [13]. A high-pass filter with a cutoff wavelength of 13 m was applied to each image of the cloud tominimize the effect of fluctuations in total atom number.
Then, for each pixel position, the variance of the opticaldensities at that position in the different images was computed. After the subtraction of the contribution of photon
shot noise, the resulting variance image reflects the noise
contribution from the atoms.
The goal of our noise measurements is to determine atvarious interaction strengths the normalized susceptibility~ ¼ =0 and compressibility ~ ¼ =0 , where 0 ¼
3n=2EF and 0 ¼ 3=2nEF are the susceptibility and compressibility of a zero-temperature noninteracting Fermi gas
with the same total density n and Fermi energy EF . Before
studying spin fluctuations through the BEC-BCS crossover,
we therefore calibrate our measurement by measuring thespin fluctuations in a noninteracting mixture, realized at
527 G where the scattering length between the two statesvanishes. Figure 3 shows raw profiles of the variances 2
and 2þ measured at the two detunings. These fluctuationsin the speckle pattern are proportional to number fluctuations in the specified probe volume V: 2 ¼ ½cðN1 
N2 Þ2 and 2þ ¼ ½c0 ðN1 =3 þ N2 Þ2 . In these relations c
and c0 are factors which have to be calibrated. Without
interactions, N1 and N2 are uncorrelated, and one predicts½ðN1  N2 Þ2 =½ðN1 =3 þ N2 Þ2 ¼ 2=½1 þ ð1=3Þ2  ¼ 1:8.

x 10

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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

0.0
527

800

900

1000

0
527

800

900

1000

527

800

900

1000

Magnetic Field (G)Magnetic Field (G)Magnetic Field (G)

(a)

(b)

(c)

2
1
0

5

10
15
20 25
30
Pixels (1 pixel = 2.6 µm)

FIG. 3 (color online). (Top panel) Example speckle noise
image, with white box indicating analysis region. (Bottom
panels) Noise data for noninteracting (left panel) and resonantlyinteracting (right panel) cold clouds, showing 2 (black dots)and 2þ (gray dots). Solid lines are Gaussian fits to the data, anddotted lines illustrate the expected full Poissonian noise for thecorresponding quantities based on density determined from offresonant absorption.

FIG. 4. (a) The ratio =, (b) the normalized susceptibility
=0 , and (c) the normalized compressibility =0 in the BECBCS crossover. The variances derived from sequences of images
are converted into thermodynamic variables using the measured
temperatures and a calibration factor determined from the noninteracting gas. The vertical line indicates the onset region ofsuperfluidity, as determined via condensate fraction measurements. The curves show theoretical zero temperature estimates
based on 1st (dotted) and 2nd order (solid) perturbative formulas
obtained from Landau’s Fermi-liquid theory integrated along theline of sight, and results from a Monte Carlo calculation (dashed)
for the compressibility in a homogeneous system [32].

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PRL 106, 010402 (2011)

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

molecules or generalized Cooper pairs; the spin susceptibility should be exponentially small in the binding energy,
while the enhanced compressibility reflects the bosoniccharacter of the molecular condensate. At 915 G and1000 G, where the sample is above the superfluid criticaltemperature, the susceptibility is larger but still below its
value for the noninteracting gas, reflecting the persistenceof pair correlations even in the normal phase of the gas.
Above the Feshbach resonance, for attractive interactions, we compare our results to first and second order
perturbation theory in the small parameter kF a. This
ignores the instability to the superfluid BCS state at exponentially small temperatures. The perturbation theory is
formulated for the Landau parameters for a Fermi liquid[16,27]. The susceptibility and compressibility are givenby 0 = ¼ ð1 þ F0a Þm=m , 0 = ¼ ð1 þ F0s Þm=m ,where m ¼ mð1 þ F1s =3Þ is the effective mass, and Fls ,Fla are the lth angular momentum symmetric and antisymmetric Landau parameters, respectively. Although the experimental data are taken for relatively strong interactions
outside the range of validity for a perturbative description,
the predictions still capture the trends observed in thenormal phase above the Feshbach resonance. This showsthat more accurate measurements of the susceptibility, anda careful study of its temperature dependence, are required
to reveal the presence of a possible pseudogap phase.
In our analysis we have neglected quantum fluctuations
which are present even at zero temperature [16,28]. They
are related to the large-q static structure factor SðqÞ measured in [29] and proportional to the surface of the probe
volume, scaling with N 2=3 logðNÞ. For fluctuations of thetotal density, their relative contribution is roughly
N 1=3 =ðT=TF Þ, and at most 40% for our experimental
parameters. Attractive interactions and pairing suppress
both the thermal and quantum spin fluctuations, but it is
not known at what temperature quantum fluctuations become essential.
Spin susceptibilities can also be obtained from the equation of state which can be determined by analyzing the
average density profiles of imbalanced mixtures [30]. Our
method has the advantage of being applicable without
imbalance, and requires only local thermal equilibrium.
Moreover fluctuations can be compared with susceptibilities determined from the equation of state to perform
absolute, model-independent thermometry for strongly interacting systems [31].
In conclusion, we have demonstrated a new technique todetermine spin susceptibilities of ultracold atomic gases
using speckle imaging. We have validated and calibrated
this technique using an ideal Fermi gas and applied it to astrongly interacting Fermi gas in the BEC-BCS crossover.
This technique is directly applicable to studying pairingand magnetic ordering of two-component gases in opticallattices.

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7 JANUARY 2011

We acknowledge Qijin Chen and Kathy Levin for providing calculations of condensate fraction, Gregory
Astrakharchik and Stefano Giorgini for providing
Monte Carlo results for the compressibility, Sandro
Stringari and Alessio Recati for discussions, and Yong-il
Shin for experimental assistance. This work was supported
by NSF and the Office of Naval Research, AFOSR(through the MURI program), and under Army Research
Office Grant No. W911NF-07-1-0493 with funds from the
DARPA Optical Lattice Emulator program.

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106

Appendix C
Correlations and pair formation in a
repulsively interacting Fermi gas
This chapter contains a reprint of Ref. [17]: C Sanner, EJ Su, W Huang, A Keshet,
J Gillen, W Ketterle. Physical review letters 108 (24), 240404

107

PRL 108, 240404 (2012)

week ending
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Correlations and Pair Formation in a Repulsively Interacting Fermi Gas
Christian Sanner, Edward J. Su, Wujie Huang, Aviv Keshet, Jonathon Gillen, and Wolfgang Ketterle
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA(Received 9 August 2011; published 13 June 2012)
A degenerate Fermi gas is rapidly quenched into the regime of strong effective repulsion near a
Feshbach resonance. The spin fluctuations are monitored using speckle imaging and, contrary to several
theoretical predictions, the samples remain in the paramagnetic phase for an arbitrarily large scattering
length. Over a wide range of interaction strengths a rapid decay into bound pairs is observed over times on
the order of 10@=EF , preventing the study of equilibrium phases of strongly repulsive fermions. Our worksuggests that a Fermi gas with strong short-range repulsive interactions does not undergo a ferromagnetic
phase transition.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.240404

PACS numbers: 03.75.Ss, 67.85.Lm, 75.10.Lp

0031-9007=12=108(24)=240404(5)time evolution of the system [19,20]. Theoretical studies
concluded that the pairing instability is somewhat fasterthan the ferromagnetic instability [21]. The second major
result of this paper is to show that pair formation occurs
indeed on a very short time scale. The measured time
constant of 10@=EF (where EF is the Fermi energy) indicates that the metastable repulsive state will never reachequilibrium and that, even in a metastable sense, a Fermi
gas with strong short-range repulsive interactions does notexist. The fast pair formation could not be observed previously due to limited time resolution [3]. Instead, a muchslower second phase in the conversion of atoms to pairs
was observed leading to the wrong conclusion that theunpaired atoms have a much longer lifetime.

2

Energy / atom (E F)

Many-body systems can often be modeled using contact
interactions, greatly simplifying the analysis while maintaining the essence of the phenomenon to be studied. Suchmodels are almost exactly realized with ultracold gases dueto the large ratio of the de Broglie wavelength to the rangeof the interatomic forces [1]. For itinerant fermions withstrong short-range repulsion, textbook calculations predicta ferromagnetic phase transition—the so-called Stoner instability [2].
Here we investigate this system using an ultracold gas offermionic lithium atoms, and observe that the ferromagnetic phase transition does not occur. A previous experimental study [3] employing a different apparatus foundindirect evidence for a ferromagnetic phase, but did notobserve the expected domain structure, possibly due to thelack of imaging resolution. Here we address this shortcoming by analyzing density and spin density fluctuations
via speckle imaging [4]. When spin domains of m atoms
form, the spin density variance will increase by a factor ofm [5], even if individual domains are not resolved. One
main result of this paper is the absence of such a significant
increase which seems to exclude the possibility of a ferromagnetic state in the studied system.
The Stoner model assumes a two-component Fermi gas
with a repulsive short-range interaction described by asingle parameter, the scattering length. The predicted
phase transition to a ferromagnetic state requires large
repulsive scattering lengths on the order of the interatomic
spacing. They can be realized only by short-range attractive potentials with a loosely bound state with binding
energy @2 =ðma2 Þ, with m being the atomic mass and abeing the scattering length [6]. However, as shown schematically in Fig. 1, the repulsive gas is then by necessity
only metastable with respect to decay into the bound state.
Many theoretical studies of a Fermi gas with strong shortrange repulsive interactions assume that the metastablestate is sufficiently long-lived [7–18]. In recent Monte
Carlo simulations, the paired state is projected out in the

B
1

A

0
magnetic
field-1

speckle trap
image
off
B
A

350 µs

-2

t

10

5

0

-5

-10

Interaction parameter (1/k Fa)

FIG. 1. Diagram showing energy levels and timing of theexperiment. The upper (repulsive) and lower (attractive) branchenergies, near a Feshbach resonance, are connected by threebody collisions. In our experiment, we quickly jump from aweakly interacting Fermi gas (A) to a strongly interacting one(B) with a rapid magnetic field change. The evolution of correlations and domains and the molecule formation (population of
the lower branch) are studied as a function of hold time t.
Adapted from [42].

240404-1

Ó 2012 American Physical Society

week ending
15 JUNE 2012PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

The experiments were carried out with typically
4:2  105 6 Li atoms in each of the two lower spin states
j1i and j2i confined in an optical dipole trap with radial andaxial trap frequencies !r ¼ 2  100ð1Þ s1 and !z ¼
2  9:06ð25Þ s1 . The sample was evaporatively cooled
at a magnetic bias field B ¼ 320 G, identical to the procedure described in [22]. Then the magnetic field was slowly
ramped to 730 G (kF a ¼ 0:35) in 500 ms. The fraction of
atoms being converted to molecules during the ramp was
measured (see below for method) to be below 5%. The
temperature of the cloud was typically 0:23ð3ÞTF at 527 Gwith a Fermi energy of EF ¼ kB TF ¼ h  6:1 kHz. After
rapidly switching the magnetic field from 730 G to the final
value in less than 350 s, spin fluctuations were measured
by speckle imaging. Optionally an appropriate rf pulse wasapplied directly before imaging to rotate the spin orientation along the measurement axis. Due to the use of 20 cm
diameter coils outside the vacuum chamber, the inductanceof the magnet coils was 330 H and the fast switching
was accomplished by rapidly discharging capacitors
charged to 500 V.
Experimentally, spin fluctuations are measured using thetechnique of speckle imaging described in Ref. [4]. For an
appropriate choice of detuning, an incident laser beam
experiences a shift of the refractive index proportional tothe difference between the local populations of the two
spin states N1 and N2 . Spin fluctuations create spatial
fluctuations in the local refractive index and imprint aphase pattern into the incoming light, which is then converted into an amplitude pattern during propagation. The
resulting spatial fluctuations in the probe laser intensity areused to determine the spin fluctuations in the sample.
In Ref. [4] we prepared samples on the lower branch of
the Feshbach resonance, where positive values of kF a
correspond to a gas of weakly bound molecules. At
kF a ¼ 1:2, we observed a sixfold suppression of spin
fluctuations and a fourfold enhancement of density fluctuations. Typical fluctuations in the speckle images of a noninteracting Fermi gas at T ¼ 0:23TF amount to 5% of theaverage optical signal per pixel, corresponding to about
50% of Poissonian fluctuations. Those fluctuations are
modified by factors between 0.2 and 1.6 due to pairingand interactions.
In this study, on the upper branch of the Feshbach resonance, the situation is reversed. For unbound atoms, as theinteraction strength increases, the two spin components
should develop stronger and stronger anticorrelations andenhanced spin fluctuations. Previous experimental work [3]and several theoretical studies [10,11,13–15,18,23] predicteda phase transition to a ferromagnetic state where the magnetic
susceptibility and therefore the spin fluctuations diverge.
Recent Monte Carlo simulations [19] predict such a divergence around kF a ¼ 0:83. We therefore expected an increase of spin fluctuations by one or several orders ofmagnitude, related to the size of magnetic domains.

Figure 2 shows the observed spin fluctuations enhancement compared to the non-interacting cloud at 527 G. The
variance enhancement factor reaches its maximum value of
1.6 immediately after the quench, decreasing during the
2 ms afterward. The absence of a dramatic increase showsthat no domains form and that the sample remains in theparamagnetic phase throughout. Similar observations weremade for a wide range of interaction strengths and wait
times. Note that first-order perturbation theory [24] predicts an increase of the susceptibility by a factor of 1.5 at
kF a ¼ 0:5 and by a factor of 2 at kFa ¼ 0:8 (i.e., no
dramatic increase for kF a < 1). Therefore, our data show
no evidence for the Fermi gas approaching the Stonerinstability.
Before we can fully interpret these findings, we have totake into account the decay of the atomic sample on theupper branch of the Feshbach resonance into bound pairs.
We characterize the pair formation by comparing the total
number of atoms and molecules Na þ 2Nmol (determinedby taking an absorption image after ballistic expansion athigh magnetic field where molecules and atoms have thesame absorption resonance) to the number of free atoms(determined by rapidly sweeping the magnetic field to 5 G
before releasing the atoms and imaging the cloud, converting pairs into deeply bound molecules that are completely
shifted out of resonance) [25].
The time evolution of the molecule production (Fig. 3)
shows two regimes of distinct behavior. For times less than
1 ms, we observe a considerable number of atoms converted into molecules, while the total number Na þ 2Nmol
remains constant. The initial drop in atom number becomeslarger as we increase the final magnetic field, and saturates
at around 50% near the Feshbach resonance.
We attribute this fast initial decay in atom number torecombination [26,27] into the weakly bound moleculark Fa 0Relative spin fluctuations

PRL 108, 240404 (2012)

1.6

0.65 1.14 2.27 ∞

(a)

1.6

1.4

1.4

1.2

1.2

1

1
527 750800

Magnetic field (G)

850

(b)

0

1

2

3

Hold time (ms)FIG. 2. Spin fluctuations (a) after 350 s as a function ofmagnetic field and (b) on resonance as a function of hold timescaled to the value measured at 527 G. Even at strong repulsive
interactions, the measured spin fluctuations are barely enhanced,
indicating only short-range correlations and no domain formation. The spin fluctuations were determined for square bins of
2:6 m, each containing on average 1000 atoms per spin state.

240404-2

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

PRL 108, 240404 (2012)
Hold time [ms]
20

40

60

80

100

120

140

1

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0

0

Molecule Fraction

Surviving fraction

1

0Surviving fraction

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Hold time [ms]FIG. 3 (color online). Characterization of molecule formation
at short and long hold times, and at different values of theinteraction strength. The closed symbols, circles (black) at
790 G with kF a ¼ 1:14, squares (blue) at 810 G with kF a ¼
2:27 and diamonds (red) at 818 G with kF a ¼ 3:5 represent thenormalized number of free atoms, the open symbols the total
number of atoms including those bound in Feshbach molecules(open circles at 790 G with kF a ¼ 1:14). The crosses (green)show the molecule fraction. The characteristic time scale is set
by the Fermi time @=EF ¼ 43 s, calculated with a cloud
averaged Fermi energy.

state. We obtain an atom loss rate N_ a =Na ¼ 250 s1
at 790 G in the first 1 ms after the magnetic field switch.
Assuming a three-body process we estimate the rate
coefficient L3 at this field to be 3:9  1022 cm6 s1 ,though the interaction is already sufficiently strong for
many-body effects to be significant. For stronger interactions, about 30% of atom loss occurs already during therelevant 100 s of ramping through the strongly interacting region, indicating a lower bound of around 3  103 s1
for the loss rate which is 13% of the inverse Fermi time
EF =@, calculated with a cloud averaged Fermi energy.
After the first millisecond, the molecule formation rate
slows down, by an order of magnitude at a magnetic
field of 790 G (and even more dramatically at higher
fields) when it reaches about 50%. It seems likely thatthe molecule fraction has reached a quasi-equilibrium
value at the local temperature, which is larger than theinitial temperature due to local heating accompanying
the molecule formation. Reference [28] presents a simple
model for the equilibrium between atoms and molecules(ignoring strong interactions). For phase space densities
around unity and close to resonance, the predicted
molecule fraction is 0.5, in good agreement with ourobservations [29].

week ending
15 JUNE 2012For longer time scales (hundred milliseconds) we observe a steady increase of the molecule fraction to 90% for
the longest hold time. This occurs due to continuous
evaporation which cools down the system and shifts theatom-molecule equilibrium towards high molecule fractions. During the same time scale, a slow loss in both
atom number and total number is observed caused byinelastic collisions (vibrational relaxation of molecules)
and evaporation loss.
Is the rapid conversion into molecules necessarily fasterthan the evolution of ferromagnetic domains? Our answer
is tentatively yes. First, for strong interactions with kF a
around 1, one expects both instabilities (pair formation andStoner instability) to have rates which scale with the Fermi
energy EF and therefore with n2=3 . Therefore, one cannotchange the competition between the instabilities by working at higher or lower densities. According to Ref. [21] thefastest unstable modes for domain formation have a wave
vector q  kF =2 and grow at a rate of up to EF =4@ when
the cloud is quenched sufficiently far beyond the criticalinteraction strength. Unstable modes with such wave vectors will develop ‘‘domains’’ of half a wavelength or size
 ¼ =q ¼ 2=kF containing 5 atoms per spin state in a
volume 3 . This rate is comparable to the observed conversion rates into pairs of 0:13EF . Therefore, at best,‘‘domains’’ of a few particles could form, but before they
can grow further and prevent the formation of pairs (in afully polarized state), rapid pair formation takes over andpopulates the lower branch of the Feshbach resonance.
Based on our observations and these arguments, it seems
that it is not possible to realize ferromagnetism with strong
short range interaction, and therefore the basic Stonermodel cannot be realized in nature.
One possibility to suppress pair formation is provided bynarrow Feshbach resonances. Here the pairs have dominantly closed channel character and therefore a muchsmaller overlap matrix element with the free atoms.
However, narrow Feshbach resonances are characterized
by a long effective range and do not realize the Stonermodel which assumes short-range interactions. Other interesting topics for future research on ferromagnetism andpair formation include the effects of dimensionality[30,31], spin imbalance [32,33], mass imbalance [34],lattice and band structure [35,36].
We now discuss whether ferromagnetism is possible
after atoms and molecules have rapidly established local
equilibrium. In other words, starting at T ¼ 0, one could
heat up the fully paired and superfluid system and create agas of atomic quasiparticles which are similar to free atoms
with repulsive interactions. Density and temperature of theatoms are now coupled. It is likely that such a state isrealized in our experiments after a few ms following thequench, until evaporative cooling converts the system intoa molecular condensate over  100 ms. The possibility
that such a quasiparticle gas could become ferromagnetic

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PRL 108, 240404 (2012)PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

has not been discussed in the literature. Our experiments do
not reveal any major increase in spin fluctuations which
seems to exclude a ferromagnetic state. In the simplest
picture, we could regard the atomic quasiparticles as free
atoms, and then apply the Stoner model to them.
Ferromagnetic domain formation is analogous to phaseseparation between the two spin components [3]. Since
dimers interact equally with the two spin components, one
might expect that even a noticeable dimer fraction should
not suppress the tendency of the atomic gas to form domains. Therefore, in a simple model, one may neglect
dimer-atom interactions.
If the Stoner model applies to this quasiparticle gas, thenext question is whether the temperature is low enoughfor the ferromagnetic phase transition. Available theoretical treatments do not predict an exact maximum transition
temperature to the ferromagnetic state and obtain an
unphysical divergence for large scattering lengths. Since
the only energy scale is the Fermi temperature, one would
expect a transition temperature which is a fraction of
the Fermi temperature [37], higher or around thetemperature scale probed in our experiments. However,even above the transition temperature, the susceptibility
is enhanced. A simple Weiss mean field or Stonermodel leads to the generic form of the susceptibilityðTÞ ¼ 0 ðTÞ=ð1  w0 ðTÞÞ, where 0 ðTÞ is the Paulisusceptibility of the non-interacting gas and w the interaction parameter. This formula predicts a twofold increasein the susceptibility even 50% above the transition temperature, which is well within the sensitivity of ourmeasurements.
Therefore, our experiment can rule out ferromagnetism
for temperatures even slightly lower than the experimental
temperatures. Temperatures are very difficult to measure
in a transient way for a dynamic system which may not be
in full equilibrium. For example, cloud thermometry
requires full equilibration and lifetimes much longer thanthe longest trap period. We attempted to measure thetemperature after the hold time near the Feshbach resonance by quickly switching the magnetic field to weakinteractions at 527 G and then performing noise thermometry using speckle imaging [4]. We measure columnintegrated fluctuations that are 0.61(8) of the Poisson value
which implies an effective temperature well below TF ,around 0.33(7) TF , not much higher than our initial
temperature of 0.23 TF . Although the cloud is not in fullequilibrium, an effective local temperature can still beobtained from noise thermometry.
Alternatively, we can estimate the temperature increase
from the heat released by pair formation. A simple model[38] accounting for the relevant energy contributions
predicts for kF a ¼ 1 that molecule fractions of higher
than 20% result in a final temperature above 0:4TF , anestimate which is higher than the measurement reported
above. One may hope that closer to resonance many-bodyweek ending
15 JUNE 2012

effects lower the released energy; however, as we show
in the Supplemental Material (Fig. 1 of [38]) this is
not necessarily the case due to the repulsive interactionenergy.
Our experiment has not shown any evidence for a possible ferromagnetic phase in an atomic gas in ‘‘chemical’’equilibrium with dimers. This implies one of the following
possibilities. (i) This gas can be described by a simple
Hamiltoninan with strong short range repulsion.
However, this Hamiltonian does not lead to ferromagnetism. This would be in conflict with the results of recent
quantum Monte Carlo simulations [19,20] and second
order perturbation theory [11], and in agreement withconclusions based on Tan relations [39]. (ii) The temperature of the gas was too high to observe ferromagnetism.
This would then imply a critical temperature around or
below 0:2T=TF , lower than generally assumed. (iii) The
quasiparticles cannot be described by the simple model ofan atomic gas with short-range repulsive interactions dueto their interactions with the paired fraction.
A previous experiment [3] reported evidence for ferromagnetism by presenting non-monotonic behavior of atom
loss rate, kinetic energy and cloud size when approaching
the Feshbach resonance, in agreement with predictions
based on the Stoner model. Our measurements confirm
that the properties of the gas strongly change near
kF a ¼ 1. Similar to [3], we observe features in kinetic
and release energy measurements near the resonance (seeSupplemental Material [38]). However, the behavior ismore complex than that captured by simple models. The
atomic fraction decays non-exponentially (see Fig. 3), andtherefore an extracted decay time will depend on the detailsof the measurement such as time resolution. Reference [3]found a maximum of the loss rate of 200 s1 for a Fermi
energy of 28 kHz. Our lower bound of the decay rate of3  103 s1 is 15 times faster at a five times smaller Fermi
energy. Our more detailed study rules out that Ref. [3] has
observed ferromagnetic behavior.
Our conclusion is that an ultracold gas with strong shortrange repulsive interactions near a Feshbach resonanceremains in the paramagnetic phase. The fast formation ofmolecules and the accompanying heating makes it impossible to study such a gas in equilibrium, confirming predictions of a rapid conversion of the atomic gas to pairs[21,40]. The Stoner criterion for ferromagnetism obtains
when the effective interaction strength times the density ofstates is larger than one. This is a at least an approximately
valid criterion for multi-band lattice models [41]. We haveshown here that this criterion cannot be applied to Fermi
gases with short-range repulsive interactions (the basic
Stoner model) since the neglected competition with pairing
is crucial.
This work was supported by NSF and ONR, AFOSR
MURI, and under ARO Grant No. W911NF-07-1-0493
with funds from the DARPA Optical Lattice Emulator

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PRL 108, 240404 (2012)PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

program. We are thankful to Eugene Demler, David
Pekker, Boris Svistunov, Nikolay Prokof’ev, andWilhelm Zwerger for valuable discussions and to David
Weld for critical reading of the manuscript.

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240404-5

Correlations and Pair Formation in a Repulsively Interacting Fermi Gas:
Supplementary Information

KINETIC ENERGY AND RELEASE ENERGY

The energy of a trapped interacting gas is the sum of
three contributions: the kinetic energy, the interactionenergy, and the potential energy in the trapping potential.
E = T + Uint + Utrap(1)

By suddenly releasing the atoms from the trap andmeasuring the radius of the cloud, it is possible to measure either the release energy (T + Uint ) or the kinetic
energy T, depending on whether the interactions are left
on or are switched off, respectively, at the time of release, by leaving the external magnetic field constant or
rapidly switching it to a value away from the Feshbachresonance.
The system is prepared with variable interaction
strength by rapidly switching the magnetic field to avalue near the Feshbach resonance. For the kinetic energy measurement, the field is again rapidly switched to
5G, after which the atoms are released from the trap.
After 8 ms of free expansion, the size of the cloud reflects
the width of the in-trap momentum distribution and theaverage in-trap kinetic energy. The observed increasein kinetic energy with increasing interaction strength reflects the onset of pair (anti-)correlations of opposite-spin
atoms — those anti-correlations reduce the repulsive potential energy at the price of increased kinetic energy.
The observed increase in kinetic energy is consistent withthe observations in Ref. [3]. We do not observe a minimum in kinetic energy as in [3], since the interactions are
suddenly increased and the cloud cannot adiabatically
expand during the ramp as was the case in the earlier
work. For fully spin-polarized domains, the kinetic energy would increase by a factor of 22/3 which provides anupper bound (since the true ground state must have anenergy lower than or equal to the fully phase-separated
state). The smaller observed energy increase (factor of
1.3) implies that fully spin polarized domains have notformed. It should be noted that the kinetic energy increase is insensitive to the correlation length or size of

0.36

0.50

0.72

kFa

1.14

2.27

∞

Relative cloud size squared

In this supplement we present measurements of therelease energy of fermions with strong repulsive interactions, derive estimates for sample heating due to molecule
formation, adapt predictions for ferromagnetic domain
formation after a quench to our experimental parameters, and discuss our temporal and spatial resolution forspin fluctuations.

Magnetic field [G]FIG. 1: Measured transverse mean square cloud size after time-of-flight expansion as a function of the interaction
strength before the release in units of the value of the noninteracting cloud. The interactions are switched off (squares)or left on (circles) at the time of release. For sufficiently longtime-of-flight the transverse 2D release energy is directly proportional to the measured mean square width of the cloud.
The expansion is either isotropic (in the case of switched off
interactions) or mostly transverse (in case of strong interactions leading to hydrodynamic expansion) [1, 2]. Uncertainties as indicated by the error bars are purely statistical.

domains and cannot clearly distinguish between ferromagnetic domains and strong anti-correlations [4, 5].
In-trap kinetic and interaction energies are measured
when the magnetic field is left at its value near the Feshbach resonance while the trap is switched off. After 4
ms of the 8 ms free expansion the field is switched to 5G
for imaging. The resulting cloud size is directly related
to the release energy of the cloud, the sum of the in-trap
kinetic and interaction energies. Around kF a = 0.5, we
observe a strong increase of the transverse release energy by a factor of about 2. This implies that the totalenergy has increased by a factor of 4/3 compared to the
non-interacting case since the interactions modify the expansion from ballistic to hydrodynamic. The comparisonof kinetic energy and release energy at 790G and 810G
shows that the extra energy due to repulsive interactions
is clearly dominated by repulsive potential energy andnot by kinetic energy. The latter would occur for ferromagnetic domains. In case of fully spin-polarized domains, the repulsive interaction energy would vanish, and2kinetic energy and release energy should be the same.
Therefore, the energy measurements also rule out a ferromagnetic phase.
The interaction-strength dependence of the release energy shows a weak maximum at 790G. The ground stateenergy has to vary monotonically with the strength of
the repulsive interactions. This follows from a simple
variational argument where the exact ground state wavefunction at strong interactions is used as a trial wavefunction at weaker interactions. Therefore, the observed
maximum is most likely related to non-equilibrium excitations caused by the sudden jump in the scattering
length.

HEATING DUE TO MOLECULE FORMATION

Molecule formation heats the sample by transferring
the binding energy and excess kinetic energy of themolecules to the remaining atoms, and also by creating
holes in the Fermi sea. For small values of kF a, the totalenergy release per molecule is h̄2 /ma2 + 2EF . From theenergy per particle for an ideal homogeneous degenerate
Fermi gas E = 0.6EF [1 + (5π 2 /12)(T /TF )2 ] we obtain

T
=
TF

s

4η
π2



1+

1
(kF a)2(2)

for the final temperature with a small molecule fraction η (assuming initially η=0 and T=0). Evaluating thisresult at kF a = 1, where the two-body binding energy is
2EF , one finds that molecule fractions of higher than
20 % result in a final temperature above 0.4TF , an estimate which is somewhat higher than the measurement
reported in the main article.

DOMAIN GROWTH PREDICTIONS AND
EXPERIMENTAL RESOLUTIONAs described in the main paper, we have observed two
dynamic time scales - a sub-ms timescale for rapid pairformation, followed by a slower time scale of tens of milliseconds where further cooling led to a full conversion of
the atomic into a molecular gas. We now want to discussover what time scale we could have observed ferromagnetic domain formation if it had happened, and someexperimental aspects regarding temporal and spatial resolution.
Pekker et al. [6] predicted in uniform systems fast
growth rates for small domains. Unstable modes withwavevector q ≈ kF /2 grow at a rate of up to EF /4h̄ when
the cloud is quenched sufficiently far beyond the critical interaction strength. This corresponds to a growthtime of around 100µs. For a wide range of interactions

and wavevectors, the predicted growth time is faster than
10h̄/EF or 250µs. During this time one would expect thethermal fluctuations to increase by a factor of e.
Wavevectors q ≈ kF /2 will develop “domains” of halfa wavelength or size ξ = π/q = 2π/kF , which is 2.3 µm
at the experimental density of 3 × 1011 cm−3 corresponding to kF = 2.7 × 104 cm−1 . For speckle imaging thesmallest effective probe volume is given by the nominal optical resolution or the optical wavelength times theaperture of the lens system which is equal to the bin sizeof 2.6 µm in our experiment. For a bin size d, the measured fluctuations are an integral over fluctuations at all
wavevectors q with an effective cutoff around 1/d. Due toa mode density factor q 2 the largest contribution comesfrom wavevectors around π/d which is equal to 0.4 kF
for our experimental parameters, fortuitously close to the
wavevector of the fastest growing unstable modes. Therefore, for a quench across a ferromagnetic phase transition,
we would have expected a sub-millisecond growth time
for the spin fluctuations, which was not observed.
Another analysis focuses on domains. As discussed in
the main paper, random domains containing m atoms
will increase the variance of spin fluctuations by a factor of m. The fastest growing unstable modes containaround 5 atoms per spin state in a volume ξ 3 . At our temperatures, the thermal fluctuations correspond to Poisson fluctuations reduced by the Pauli suppression factor (3/2) T /TF , i.e. in a small volume with about ten
particles, the spin fluctuations correspond to plus/minus
one particle, and will approach saturation (i.e. fully spinpolarized domains) after a few growth times (when, ofcourse, the unstable mode analysis is no longer applicable). If these domains randomize through spin diffusion,
it will increase the variance of the spin fluctuations at alllength scales larger than ξ by a factor of m, without requiring optical resolution of the domain size ξ. Spin diffusion effectively “converts” initial fluctuations at wavevector q to fluctuations at all wavevectors smaller than q.
Since we start with a balanced two-state mixture withzero spin density, formation of random (i.e. uncorrelated)domains requires spin diffusion. Full sensitivity to domains requires spin transport over a distance equal tothe bin size. Assuming diffusive motion at resonant interactions with a spin diffusivity Ds ≈ h/m as observedin [7] results in a corresponding minimum wait time ofabout 300µs. This means that after crossing a ferromagnetic phase transition, formation of domains of a few totens of particles should have occurred on ms scales andshould have resulted in an observable increase of spin
fluctuations. Therefore, we conclude that we have notentered any ferromagnetic phase within our experimental parameters.

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