Spin-orbit coupled two-electron Fermi gases of ytterbium atoms

Abstract

We demonstrate all-optical implementation of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in a two-electron Fermi gas of ${}^{173}$Yb atoms by coupling two hyperfine ground states with a narrow optical transition. Due to the SU($N$) symmetry of the ${}^1$S${}_0$ ground-state manifold which is insensitive to external magnetic fields, an optical AC Stark effect is applied to split the ground spin states, which exhibits a high stability compared with experiments on alkali and lanthanide atoms, and separate out an effective spin-1/2 subspace from other hyperfine levels for the realization of SOC. The dephasing spin dynamics when a momentum-dependent spin-orbit gap being suddenly opened and the asymmetric momentum distribution of the spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas are observed as a hallmark of SOC. The realization of all-optical SOC for ytterbium fermions should offer a new route to a long-lived spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas and greatly expand our capability in studying novel spin-orbit physics with alkaline-earth-like atoms.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (12)

• Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases
• Spin-Injection Spectroscopy of a Spin-Orbit Coupled Fermi Gas
• Degenerate Quantum Gases with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• A one-dimensional liquid of fermions with tunable spin
• An SU(N) Mott insulator of an atomic Fermi gas realized by large-spin Pomeranchuk cooling
• Ultracold Fermi Gases with Emergent SU(N) Symmetry
• Degenerate Fermi Gases of Ytterbium
• Atomic Quantum Simulation of U(N) and SU(N) Non-Abelian Lattice Gauge Theories
• Tunable Spin-Orbit Coupling via Strong Driving in Ultracold Atom Systems
• Effect of Induced Spin-Orbit Coupling for Atoms via Laser Fields
• Dicke-type phase transition in a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate
• Softening of Roton and Phonon Modes in a Bose-Einstein Condensate with Spin-Orbit Coupling

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Observation of the supersolid stripe phase in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Spin-orbit coupled fermions in an optical lattice clock
• Two-dimensional non-Hermitian skin effect in an ultracold Fermi gas
• Realization of Qi-Wu-Zhang model in spin-orbit-coupled ultracold fermions
• Wave-packet Dynamics in Synthetic Non-Abelian Gauge Fields
• Tail-free self-accelerating solitons and vortices
• Large-$N$ Chern insulators: lattice field theory and quantum simulation approaches to correlation effects in the quantum anomalous Hall effect
• Spin-orbital-angular-momentum-coupled quantum gases
• Resonant dynamics of strongly interacting SU($n$) fermionic atoms in a synthetic flux ladder
• Experimental realization of a fermionic spin-momentum lattice
• Topological chiral currents in the Gross-Neveu model extension
• Observing a topological phase transition with deep neural networks from experimental images of ultracold atoms
• Active control of a diode laser with injection locking
• Two types of dark solitons in a spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gas
• Topological spin-orbit-coupled fermions beyond rotating wave approximation
• Synthetic spin-orbit coupling for the multispin models in optical lattices
• Generating topological optical flux lattices for ultracold atoms by modulated Raman and radio-frequency couplings
• Topological phases protected by projective space-time inversion symmetry in alkaline-earth-metal-like atoms
• Two atoms in a harmonic trap with spin-orbital-angular-momentum coupling
• The algebraic spin liquid in the SU(6) Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice
• Orbital Optical Raman Lattice