Density-wave ordering in a unitary Fermi gas with photon-mediated interactions
arXiv:2212.04402 · doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06018-3
Abstract
A density wave (DW) is a fundamental type of long-range order in quantum matter tied to self-organization into a crystalline structure. The interplay of DW order with superfluidity can lead to complex scenarios that pose a great challenge to theoretical analysis. In the last decades, tunable quantum Fermi gases have served as model systems for exploring the physics of strongly interacting fermions, including most notably magnetic ordering, pairing and superfluidity, and the crossover from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Here, we realize a Fermi gas featuring both strong, tunable contact interactions and photon-mediated, spatially structured long-range interactions in a transversely driven high-finesse optical cavity. Above a critical long-range interaction strength DW order is stabilized in the system, which we identify via its superradiant light scattering properties. We quantitatively measure the variation of the onset of DW order as the contact interaction is varied across the BCS-BEC crossover, in qualitative agreement with a mean-field theory. The atomic DW susceptibility varies over an order of magnitude upon tuning the strength and the sign of the long-range interactions below the self-ordering threshold, demonstrating independent and simultaneous control over the contact and long-range interactions. Therefore, our experimental setup provides a fully tunable and microscopically controllable platform for the experimental study of the interplay of superfluidity and DW order.
arXiv comment11 pages, 7 figures
References in corpus (44)
- Feshbach Resonances in Ultracold Gases
- Theory of ultracold Fermi gases
- The Dicke Quantum Phase Transition with a Superfluid Gas in an Optical Cavity
- Theory of Intertwined Orders in High Temperature Superconductors
- Cold atoms in cavity-generated dynamical optical potentials
- Revealing the Superfluid Lambda Transition in the Universal Thermodynamics of a Unitary Fermi Gas
- Supersolid formation in a quantum gas breaking continuous translational symmetry
- Quantum phases from competing short- and long-range interactions in an optical lattice
- Exploring Symmetry Breaking at the Dicke Quantum Phase Transition
- Dipolar physics: A review of experiments with magnetic quantum gases
- The Equation of State of a Low-Temperature Fermi Gas with Tunable Interactions
- Classification of Charge Density Waves Based on Their Nature
- Dynamical phase transition in the open Dicke model
- Cavity QED with Quantum Gases: New Paradigms in Many-Body Physics
- Roton-type mode softening in a quantum gas with cavity-mediated long-range interactions
- The BCS-BEC crossover: From ultra-cold Fermi gases to nuclear systems
- Cavity Quantum Materials
- New frontiers with quantum gases of polar molecules
- Observation of a superradiant Mott insulator in the Dicke-Hubbard model
- Tunable-range, photon-mediated atomic interactions in multimode cavity QED
- Real-time observation of fluctuations at the driven-dissipative Dicke phase transition
- Monitoring and manipulating Higgs and Goldstone modes in a supersolid quantum gas
- Spinor self-ordering of a quantum gas in a cavity
- Fermionic Superradiance in a Transversely Pumped Optical Cavity
- Formation of a spin texture in a quantum gas coupled to a cavity
- Umklapp Superradiance from a Collisionless Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gas
- Superradiance of Degenerate Fermi Gases in a Cavity
- Ultracold fermions in a cavity-induced artificial magnetic field
- A Superradiant Topological Peierls Insulator inside an Optical Cavity
- An optical lattice with sound
- Universal Sound Diffusion in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
- Dynamical spin-orbit coupling of a quantum gas
- Excitation Spectrum and Superfluid Gap of an Ultracold Fermi Gas
- Photo-induced electron pairing in a driven cavity
- Analysis of Kapitza-Dirac diffraction patterns beyond the Raman-Nath regime
- Strongly correlated Fermions strongly coupled to light
- Cavity-mediated unconventional pairing in ultracold fermionic atoms
- Second sound and the density response function in uniform superfluid atomic gases
- Superradiant Phase Transition of Fermi Gases in a Cavity across a Feshbach Resonance
- Universal pair-polaritons in a strongly interacting Fermi gas
- Equation of state and effective mass of the unitary Fermi gas in a 1D periodic potential
- Cavity-assisted preparation and detection of a unitary Fermi gas
- Cavity-induced Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov superfluids of ultracold Fermi gases
- Optomechanical Response of a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
Cited by in corpus (25)
- Many-Body Open Quantum Systems
- Conventional and unconventional Dicke models: Multistabilities and nonequilibrium dynamics
- Interactions mediated by atoms, photons, electrons, and excitons
- Non-equilibrium phases of Fermi gas inside a cavity with imbalanced pumping
- A cavity-microscope for micrometer-scale control of atom-photon interactions
- Optomechanical self-organization in a mesoscopic atom array
- Fluctuation-Induced Bistability of Fermionic Atoms Coupled to a Dissipative Cavity
- Prethermalization of light and matter in cavity-coupled Rydberg arrays
- Laser-painted cavity-mediated interactions in a quantum gas
- Torus bifurcation of a dissipative time crystal
- Spin self-organization in an optical cavity facilitated by inhomogeneous broadening
- Dynamical phases of a BEC in a bad optical cavity at optomechanical resonance
- Emergence of Sound in a Tunable Fermi Fluid
- Master Equation for a Quantum Gas of Polarizable Particles in Cavities
- Phase transition, phase separation and mode softening of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical cavity
- Bandstructure of a coupled BEC-cavity system: effects of dissipation and geometry
- Demonstration of strong coupling of a subradiant atom array to a cavity vacuum
- Structural Dynamics and Strong Correlations in Dynamical Quantum Optical Lattices
- Paramagnetic phases of strongly correlated ultracold fermions coupled to an optical cavity
- The fate of the Fermi surface coupled to a single-wave-vector cavity mode
- Tunable intertwining via collective excitations
- Tuning Density and Spin Ordering of Degenerate Fermi Gases in an Optical Cavity
- Pauli crystal superradiance
- Kinetically constrained cavity QED: from blockaded ferromagnetism to long-range quantum scars
- Microscopy of cavity-induced density-wave ordering in ultracold gases