A phase microscope for quantum gases
arXiv:2410.10611 · doi:10.1126/science.adt1712
The paper introduces a phase microscope technique that uses matter-wave imaging to map phase fluctuations to density fluctuations, enabling spatially resolved study of coherence in a 2D ultracold Bose gas across a thermal phase transition.
Abstract
Coherence properties are central to quantum systems and are at the heart of phenomena such as superconductivity. Here we study coherence properties of an ultracold Bose gas in a two-dimensional optical lattice across the thermal phase transition. To infer the phase coherence and phase fluctuation profile, we use direct matter-wave imaging of higher Talbot revivals as well as a new phase microscope based on a site-resolved mapping of phase fluctuations to density fluctuations during matter-wave imaging. We observe the algebraic decay of the phase correlations in the superfluid phase and a linear temperature increase of the exponent. These techniques will also allow studying coherence properties in strongly-correlated quantum systems with full spatial resolution.
18 pages, 8 figures, including supplementary material