Observation of unitary p-wave interactions between fermions in an optical lattice

Abstract

Exchange-antisymmetric pair wavefunctions in fermionic systems can give rise to unconventional superconductors and superfluids with non-trivial transport properties. The realisation of these states in controllable quantum systems, such as ultracold gases, could enable new types of quantum simulations, topological quantum gates, and exotic few-body states. However, p-wave and other antisymmetric interactions are weak in naturally occurring systems, and their enhancement via Feshbach resonances in ultracold systems has been limited by three-body loss. In this work, we create isolated pairs of spin-polarised fermionic atoms in a multi-orbital three-dimensional optical lattice. We spectroscopically measure elastic p-wave interaction energies of strongly interacting pairs of atoms near a magnetic Feshbach resonance and find pair lifetimes to be up to fifty times larger than in free space. We demonstrate that on-site interaction strengths can be widely tuned by the magnetic field and confinement strength but collapse onto a universal single-parameter curve when rescaled by the harmonic energy and length scales of a single lattice site. Since three-body processes are absent within our approach, we are able to observe elastic unitary p-wave interactions for the first time. We take the first steps towards coherent temporal control via Rabi oscillations between free-atom and interacting-pair states. All experimental observations are compared both to an exact solution for two harmonically confined atoms interacting via a p-wave pseudopotential, and to numerical solutions using an ab-initio interaction potential. The understanding and control of on-site p-wave interactions provides a necessary component for the assembly of multi-orbital lattice models, and a starting point for investigations of how to protect such a system from three-body recombination even in the presence of tunnelling.

15 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (21)

• Ultracold Feshbach molecules in an orbital optical lattice
• Magnon Bose-Einstein condensates: from time crystals and quantum chromodynamics to vortex sensing and cosmology
• Universality of internal correlations of strongly interacting p-wave fermions in one-dimensional geometry
• Emergent s-wave interactions between identical fermions in quasi-one-dimensional geometries
• Quantum Monte Carlo study of the role of p-wave interactions in ultracold repulsive Fermi gases
• Finite-time scaling beyond the Kibble-Zurek prerequisite in Dirac systems
• Synthetic non-Abelian topological charges in ultracold atomic gases
• Topological two-band electron-hole superconductors with $d$-wave symmetry: Absence of Dirac quasiparticle annihilation in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene
• Pairing properties of an odd-frequency superfluid Fermi gas
• Cooper pairing and tripling in one-dimensional spinless fermions with attractive two- and three-body forces
• Non-Hermitian $p$-wave superfluid and effects of the inelastic three-body loss in a one-dimensional spin-polarized Fermi gas
• Analytical solutions of the Schrödinger equation for two confined atoms with van der Waals interaction
• Fate of thermalization of ultracold fermions with two-body dissipation
• Exact Thermodynamics For Weakly Interacting Normal-Phase Quantum Gases: Equations of State For All Partial Waves
• Pairing from repulsion in a two-dimensional Fermi gas with soft-core interactions
• Probing $p$-wave effects in spin-density separation of Bose mixtures with the dynamic structure factor
• Single Particle Spectroscopies of $p$-wave and $d$-wave Interacting Bose Gases in Normal Phase
• Observation of modulation-induced Feshbach resonance
• Lellouch-Lüscher relation for ultracold few-atom systems under confinement
• Elastic collision rates of spin-polarized fermions in two dimensions
• Efficient shortcuts-to-adiabaticity for loading an ultracold Fermi gas into higher orbital bands of one-dimensional optical lattice