Measurement-Enhanced Determination of BEC Phase Transitions
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sussex Research Online Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics PAPER Related content - Sub-atom shot noise Faraday imaging of Measurement-enhanced determination of BEC ultracold atom clouds M A Kristensen, M Gajdacz, P L Pedersen phase transitions et al. - Two-terminal transport measurements with cold atoms To cite this article: Mark G Bason et al 2018 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 51 175301 Sebastian Krinner, Tilman Esslinger and Jean-Philippe Brantut - PhD Tutorial Axel Griesmaier View the article online for updates and enhancements. This content was downloaded from IP address 139.184.246.34 on 08/08/2018 at 12:10 Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 51 (2018) 175301 (9pp) https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6455/aad447 Measurement-enhanced determination of BEC phase transitions Mark G Bason1,3 , Robert Heck3 , Mario Napolitano, Ottó Elíasson , Romain Müller, Aske Thorsen, Wen-Zhuo Zhang2, Jan J Arlt and Jacob F Sherson Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark E-mail: [email protected] Received 17 May 2018, revised 2 July 2018 Accepted for publication 18 July 2018 Published 6 August 2018 Abstract We demonstrate how dispersive atom number measurements during evaporative cooling can be used for enhanced determination of the parameter dependence of the transition to a Bose– Einstein condensate (BEC). In this way shot-to-shot fluctuations in initial conditions are detected and the information extracted per experimental realization is increased. We furthermore calibrate in situ images from dispersive probing of a BEC with corresponding absorption images in time- of-flight. This allows for the determination of the transition point in a single experimental realization by applying multiple dispersive measurements. Finally, we explore the continuous probing of several consecutive phase transition crossings using the periodic addition of a focused ‘dimple’ potential. Keywords: Bose–Einstein condensates, Faraday effect, phase transitions, quantum simulation, ultracold quantum gases, phase diagrams, dispersive probing (Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal) Quantum effects have become increasingly important in the during forced evaporative cooling can be used to enhance the development of modern technologies and have led to the need accuracy in determining the critical point, at which the for accurate quantum simulation [1, 2]. Various approaches, transition to a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) occurs. Sec- including cold atoms [3–5] and ions [6], superconducting ond, we investigate multiple, in situ probing of BECs during circuits [7], and photons [8] are used to perform such simu- evaporation as a means of single-shot mapping of a phase lations. In particular, many quantum simulators aim to pin transition. down the boundaries between discrete phases of many-body Since the pioneering work on dispersive probing systems, such as Ising spin transition points [4, 6] or magnetic [10, 11], it has been employed to investigate the relative phases [5], with the highest possible accuracy. Current repulsion of BECs and thermal clouds [12] and to monitor the simulations focus on providing tight experimental bounds for formation of a BEC [13, 14] as well as the appearance and fi benchmarking theoretical models, such as nite temperature dynamics of solitons [15, 16]. In-sequence benchmark mea- fl [ ] bosonic super uids in optical lattices 9 . surements of cold atomic clouds have recently been applied as In this article we investigate the potential for using dis- a tool to moderately reduce classical fluctuations in atom persive probing of ultracold atom clouds in two distinct toy- number [17]. Using active feedback, atom number stabiliza- model settings to enhance future quantum simulations. First, −3 tion of cold clouds to the 10 level was demonstrated in we demonstrate that benchmark probes of thermal clouds [18]. However, to date no experiments have explored 1 Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of benchmark-measurement-enhanced evaluation of the BEC Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, United Kingdom. atom number. Efficient suppression of classical fluctuations 2 Present address: Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum could enable the settlement of long-standing theoretical dis- Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and fl Technology, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. putes concerning the nature of fundamental uctuations 3 Contributed equally to this work. arising at the BEC phase transition [19]. 0953-4075/18/175301+09$33.00 1 © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 51 (2018) 175301 M G Bason et al In recent years, theoretical studies on dispersive light– matter interaction based quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements have demonstrated these as a useful tool for the detection and control of quantum many-body systems. Quantum-noise-limited probing and feedback may enable the line-width reduction of atom lasers [20], the stabilization of BECs against spontaneous emission [21], and to squeeze and entangle Bogoliubov excitations [22]. If extended to optical lattices, it may allow for QND detection of quantum phase transitions [23, 24] as well as Schrödinger cat state generation [25, 26] and arbitrary quantum state engineering using tun- neling [25] and pinned [27] atoms. To realize its full potential, however, careful studies of the fundamental information-dis- turbance trade-off [14, 28–31] associated with dispersive Figure 1. (a)Experimental setup showing the crossed dipole trap imaging are required. (red) at a wavelength of 1064 nm and the imaging lens. Detuned This article is structured as follows: in section 1, we show light (blue) is used to dispersively probe the BEC. A dimple ( ) that minimally destructive measurements of the atom number potential orange arrow at a wavelength of 912 nm allows for repeated phase transition crossings. The probing light and the early in the experimental sequence can be used to predict the trapping light are separated by dichroic mirrors. A polarizing beam BEC atom number. Based on the results of these dispersive splitter (not depicted) filters the rotated component of the probing measurements of the intermediate phase-space density (PSD) light. (b)Evaporation scheme showing the evaporation power as a we group the BEC data and demonstrate a clear shift in the function of time. Illustrated are the dispersive benchmark pulse at ( ) BEC transition versus initial conditions. We use this addi- evaporation power Po yellow line and the probing around the phase transition (red lines) realized either with destructive absorption tional information for a high-resolution investigation of the imaging or with multiple dispersive probe pulses. The inset transition point in our toy-model. The purpose of this schematically shows the toy-model critical curve describing the investigation is not to obtain parameters of this well-studied power, Pc, at which the transition to a BEC occurs as a function of transition at high precision but rather to demonstrate a novel the phase-space density, PSDo, measured dispersively at Po. The methodology to increase the available information per arrows illustrate the paths of individual experimental realizations for different PSD . experimental run. This methodology may also find applica- o tions for fluctuating magnetic fields in the determination of – ≈( – ) × 6 magnetic order phase transitions in Ising spin chains [4], N0 N» 0 0.6 and total atom numbers N 2.1 0.8 10 impurity doping concentrations for the quantum simulation of are produced. the doped Hubbard Hamiltonian [32, 33], or the chemical Non-destructive, dispersive measurements of the cloud fi ( ) potential in the realization of both Bose- and Fermi–Hubbard are recorded using dark eld Faraday imaging DFFI .An models. Recently, post-selection of data conditioned on in- introduction to this method as well as a comparison with other [ ] sequence in situ measurements of magnetic field values was non-destructive imaging techniques is given in 29 . In brief, used to enhance Rabi oscillation contrast [34]. the Faraday effect leads to a rotation of the incoming linear In section 2 of this article, we perform a detailed com- light polarization proportional to the column density of an parison of images obtained by dispersively probing BECs atomic cloud. To implement DFFI, probing light blue detuned Δ = in situ and equivalent absorption images after a time-of-flight. by 1.5 GHz from the ∣FF=ñ¢=ñ23∣ transition propagates along the same axis as one of the dipole trap This allows for the observation of the phase transition in a −2 single experimental realization using multiple dispersive beams. Intensities of 10 mW cm are used, corresponding to μ –2 μ –1 fi probe pulses as well as the quantification of the deterministic around 400 photons m s . A small bias magnetic eld of shift of the critical point due to probe induced heating. around 1 G along the light propagation direction preserves the ’ Finally, we take first steps to dispersively probe several atomic sample s spin polarization. By inserting a polarizing -4 consecutive phase transitions using the periodic addition of a beam splitter cube with a suppression factor of 3 ´ 10 in focused dimple potential in a single experimental realization. the imaging path, only the rotated component of the light is imaged onto an electron multiplying charge coupled device (EMCCD) camera with an effective spatial resolution of – μ 1. Faraday imaging as dispersive benchmark probe 3 4 m. In each realization of the experiment, a DFFI pulse of 20 μs duration probes the thermal cloud at a trapping 4 ( fi ( )) Our experimental setup is shown in figure 1(a). Atoms are power Po = 1.1 W see gure 1 b and thus realizes a dis- 87 persive benchmark (DB) measurement.