An SU(N) Mott insulator of an atomic Fermi gas realized by large-spin Pomeranchuk cooling

Abstract

The Hubbard model, containing only the minimum ingredients of nearest neighbor hopping and on-site interaction for correlated electrons, has succeeded in accounting for diverse phenomena observed in solid-state materials. One of the interesting extensions is to enlarge its spin symmetry to SU(N>2), which is closely related to systems with orbital degeneracy. Here we report a successful formation of the SU(6) symmetric Mott insulator state with an atomic Fermi gas of ytterbium (173Yb) in a three-dimensional optical lattice. Besides the suppression of compressibility and the existence of charge excitation gap which characterize a Mott insulating phase, we reveal an important difference between the cases of SU(6) and SU(2) in the achievable temperature as the consequence of different entropy carried by an isolated spin. This is analogous to Pomeranchuk cooling in solid 3He and will be helpful for investigating exotic quantum phases of SU(N) Hubbard system at extremely low temperatures.

20 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Nature Physics

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• Coherent pumping of a Mott insulator: Fermi golden rule versus Rabi oscillations

Cited by in corpus (48)

• Tools for quantum simulation with ultracold atoms in optical lattices
• A one-dimensional liquid of fermions with tunable spin
• Spectroscopic observation of SU(N)-symmetric interactions in Sr orbital magnetism
• Observation of two-orbital spin-exchange interactions with ultracold SU(N)-symmetric fermions
• Ultracold Fermi Gases with Emergent SU(N) Symmetry
• Atomic Quantum Simulation of U(N) and SU(N) Non-Abelian Lattice Gauge Theories
• Direct observation of coherent inter-orbital spin-exchange dynamics
• Production of quantum degenerate strontium gases: Larger, better, faster, colder
• Quantum correlations and entanglement in far-from-equilibrium spin systems
• Spin-orbit coupled two-electron Fermi gases of ytterbium atoms
• Compressibility of a fermionic Mott insulator of ultracold atoms
• Adiabatic loading of one-dimensional SU(N) alkaline earth fermions in optical lattices
• Quantum spin models for the SU(n)_1 Wess-Zumino-Witten model
• Non-Abelian SU(N-1)-singlet fractional quantum Hall states from coupled wires
• Nagaoka states in the SU($n$) Hubbard model
• Reservoir spectroscopy of 5s5p ${}^3$P${}_2$ - 5s$n$d ${}^3$D${}_{1,2,3}$ transitions in strontium
• Phase diagrams of one-dimensional half-filled two-orbital SU(N) cold fermions systems
• Quantum Monte Carlo simulation of thermodynamic properties of SU(2N) ultracold fermions in optical lattices
• Mott transitions in the half-filled SU(2M) symmetric Hubbard model
• Structure of Spin Correlations in High Temperature SU($N$) Quantum Magnets
• Rigorous results on the ground state of the attractive SU($N$) Hubbard model
• Preparing Atomic Topological Quantum Matter by Adiabatic Nonunitary Dynamics
• Mott made easy
• Finite-temperature valence-bond-solid transitions and thermodynamic properties of interacting SU($2N$) Dirac fermions
• Interorbital Interactions in an SU(2)xSU(6)-Symmetric Fermi-Fermi Mixture
• Exact diagonalization of $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ Heisenberg and AKLT chains using the full $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ symmetry
• Breaking of SU(4) symmetry and interplay between strongly correlated phases in the Hubbard model
• Generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation of multi-flavor Hubbard models
• Symmetry-protected topological phases in the SU(N) Heisenberg spin chain: a Majorana-fermion approach
• Exotic pairing in 1D spin-3/2 atomic gases with $SO(4)$ symmetry
• Synthetic-gauge-field-induced resonances and Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov states in a one-dimensional optical lattice
• Cooling schemes for two-component fermions in layered optical lattices
• Photoassociation spectroscopy of ultracold ${}^{173}$Yb atoms near the intercombination line
• Size and shape of Mott regions for fermionic atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice
• Stabilization of the chiral phase of the SU($6m$) Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice with $m$ particles per site for $m$ larger than 1
• Eigenspectrum, Chern Numbers and Phase Diagrams of Ultracold Color-orbit Coupled SU(3) Fermions in Optical Lattices
• Even-odd effects in the $J_1-J_2$ SU($N$) Heisenberg spin chain
• Quasiperiodic magnetic chain as a spin filter for arbitrary spin states
• Cyclotron Dynamics of a Kondo Singlet in a Spin-Orbit-Coupled Alkaline-Earth Atomic Gas
• The Symmetry Principle in Condensed Matter Physics (I)
• Quantum Criticality of one-dimensional multicomponent Fermi Gas with Strongly Attractive Interaction
• Finite temperature dynamical properties of SU($N$) fermionic Hubbard models in the spin-incoherent regime
• Phase transition of an SU(3) symmetric spin-1 chain
• Ground-state phase diagram of the SU($4$) Heisenberg model on a plaquette lattice
• Polarization-induced phase separation and re-entrant transition of two component-fermions in a one-dimensional lattice
• Photoassociative Spectroscopy of ${}^{87}$Sr
• Nonzero angular momentum density wave phases in SU($N$) fermions with singlet-bond and triplet-current interactions
• Topological Color-Hall Insulators: SU(3) Fermions in Optical Lattices