Atomic and molecular physics articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Review Article |

    Optical box traps create a potential landscape for quantum gases that is close to the homogeneous theoretical ideal. This Review of box trapping methods highlights the breakthroughs in experimental many-body physics that have followed their development.

    • Nir Navon
    • , Robert P. Smith
    •  & Zoran Hadzibabic

  • Review Article |

    Spectroscopic techniques can probe atomic and molecular gases with exquisite precision. This Review discusses the wide array of methods that have been developed and applied to study many-body physics in ultracold gases.

    • Chris J. Vale
    •  & Martin Zwierlein

  • Review Article |

    The detailed structure of each atomic species determines what physics can be achieved with ultracold gases. This review discusses the exciting applications that follow from lanthanides’ complex electronic structure.

    • Matthew A. Norcia
    •  & Francesca Ferlaino

  • Review Article |

    Laser cooling underpins the field of ultracold quantum gases. This Review surveys recent methodological advances that are pushing quantum gases into new regimes.

    • Florian Schreck
    •  & Klaasjan van Druten

  • News & Views |

    Interacting quantum systems are difficult to formulate theoretically, but Nikolai Bogoliubov offered a workaround more than 70 years ago that has stood the test of time. Now, correlations that are a crucial feature of his theory have been observed.

    • S. S. Hodgman
    •  & A. G. Truscott

  • Letter |

    The evolution of many-body magnetic spin systems is influenced by many factors, including inhomogeneity and the presence of interfaces. These effects have now been measured in a far-from-equilibrium binary mixture of ultracold gases.

    • A. Farolfi
    • , A. Zenesini
    •  & G. Ferrari

  • Article |

    The hyperfine states of ultracold polar molecules are a strong candidate for storing quantum information. Identifying and eliminating all detectable causes of decoherence has extended the qubit coherence time beyond 5.6 s in RbCs molecules.

    • Philip D. Gregory
    • , Jacob A. Blackmore
    •  & Simon L. Cornish

  • Review Article |

    The freedom to manipulate quantum gases with external fields makes them an ideal platform for studying many-body physics. Floquet engineering using time-periodic modulations has greatly expanded the range of accessible models and phenomena.

    • Christof Weitenberg
    •  & Juliette Simonet

  • Letter |

    Antiferromagnetic systems are a source of several interesting many-body phases. Now a Heisenberg antiferromagnet has been made from ultracold bosons, providing a highly tunable starting point for experimental investigations that simulate such models.

    • Hui Sun
    • , Bing Yang
    •  & Jian-Wei Pan

  • News & Views |

    The two-fluid model of superfluids predicts a second, quantum mechanical form of sound. Ultracold atom experiments have now measured second sound in the unusual two-dimensional superfluid described by the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition.

    • Sandro Stringari

  • Letter |

    Many applications of quantum systems require them to be joined by strong, controllable interactions. Exploiting the physics of quantum squeezing can amplify the strength of boson-mediated interactions, yielding higher performance.

    • S. C. Burd
    • , R. Srinivas
    •  & D. H. Slichter

  • Article |

    Long-range Ising interactions present in one-dimensional spin chains can induce a confining potential between pairs of domain walls, slowing down the thermalization of the system. This has now been observed in a trapped-ion quantum simulator.

    • W. L. Tan
    • , P. Becker
    •  & C. Monroe

  • Letter |

    Quantum impurities immersed in a bosonic environment can evolve into polaronic quasiparticles, so-called polarons. Interferometric measurement reveals this transition, which involves three different regimes dominated by few-body and many-body dynamics.

    • Magnus G. Skou
    • , Thomas G. Skov
    •  & Jan J. Arlt

  • News & Views |

    Table-top superfluid experiments offer a way of bringing the physics of astrophysical black holes into the lab. But the presence of two event horizons in these superfluid black holes complicates matters — and makes them more interesting.

    • Giovanni Modugno

  • Article |

    Self-referenced attosecond streaking enables in situ measurements of Auger emission in atomic neon excited by femtosecond pulses from an X-ray free-electron laser with subfemtosecond time resolution and despite the jitter inherent to X-ray free-electron lasers.

    • D. C. Haynes
    • , M. Wurzer
    •  & A. L. Cavalieri

  • Letter |

    Starting from a strongly correlated state, with highly non-Gaussian correlations, a Gaussian state can emerge dynamically over time. Experiments with ultracold atoms show how the mixing between phase and density fluctuations plays the crucial role.

    • Thomas Schweigler
    • , Marek Gluza
    •  & Jörg Schmiedmayer

  • News & Views |

    Manipulating weakly bound helium dimers with ultrafast laser pulses reveals their quantum behaviour. This method opens a route towards studying the low-energy dynamics of other exotic and fragile quantum states.

    • Daniel Rolles

  • Letter |

    Ultrashort laser fields applied to a helium dimer are able to tune the interactions between two helium atoms. A video of the dimer’s response to this localized disturbance shows the effect of dissociation and alignment of the wave packets.

    • Maksim Kunitski
    • , Qingze Guan
    •  & Reinhard Dörner

  • Measure for Measure |

    Within the Hartree atomic unit systems, the Schrödinger equation becomes parameter free. But there’s more to it than making a student’s life easier, as Gordon Drake and Eite Tiesinga recount.

    • Gordon W. F. Drake
    •  & Eite Tiesinga

  • News & Views |

    When molecular model systems, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are ionized by ultrashort extreme ultraviolet pulses, their relaxation path proceeds via electron–phonon scattering, linking molecules to typical solid-state matter behaviour.

    • Laura Cattaneo

  • News & Views |

    Observing accreting black holes in the early Universe allows precise comparison of clocks over intercontinental distances on Earth. This is achieved with a novel observation strategy using the next generation of very long baseline interferometry systems.

    • Rüdiger Haas

  • Article |

    Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen entanglement between a millimetre-size mechanical membrane oscillator and a collective atomic spin oscillator formed by an ensemble of caesium atoms is achieved, although the two systems are spatially separated by one metre.

    • Rodrigo A. Thomas
    • , Michał Parniak
    •  & Eugene S. Polzik

  • Article |

    A weak-to-strong quantum measurement transition has been observed in a single-trapped-ion system, where the ion’s internal electronic state and its vibrational motion play the roles of the measured system and the measuring pointer.

    • Yiming Pan
    • , Jie Zhang
    •  & Nir Davidson

  • Article |

    Ultracold alkaline-earth fermionic atoms with large number of nuclear spin states possess SU(N) symmetry. That deeply affects their interaction properties, and allows a Fermi gas of these atoms to be cooled quickly to the quantum degenerate regime.

    • Lindsay Sonderhouse
    • , Christian Sanner
    •  & Jun Ye

  • News & Views |

    Novel non-equilibrium phases of matter have recently become the focus of intense interest. The realization of topological phases which cannot exist under the constraints of thermodynamic equilibrium is a key aim.

    • Mark S. Rudner

  • Article |

    Standard topological invariants commonly used in static systems are not enough to fully capture the topological properties of Floquet systems. In a periodically driven quantum gas, chiral edge modes emerge despite all Chern numbers being equal to zero.

    • Karen Wintersperger
    • , Christoph Braun
    •  & Monika Aidelsburger

  • Letter |

    The quantum Hall effect is realized in a two-dimensional quantum gas system consisting of one spatial dimension and one synthetic dimension encoded in the atomic spin. Measurements show distinct bulk properties rooted in the topological structure.

    • Thomas Chalopin
    • , Tanish Satoor
    •  & Sylvain Nascimbene

  • Article |

    High entanglement fidelity between neutral atoms is achieved using highly excited Rydberg states. The unique electron structure provided by alkaline-earth atoms makes it a promising platform for various quantum-technology-based applications.

    • Ivaylo S. Madjarov
    • , Jacob P. Covey
    •  & Manuel Endres

  • News & Views |

    Systems of neutral atoms are gradually gaining currency as a promising candidate for realizing large-scale quantum computing. The achievement of a record-high fidelity in quantum operation with alkaline-earth Rydberg atoms is a case in point.

    • Wenhui Li

  • Article |

    Generalization of linear response theory to the non-Hermitian case turns dissipation into a new tool for detecting equilibrium phases. The prediction from this theory remarkably agrees with a recent cold atom experiment.

    • Lei Pan
    • , Xin Chen
    •  & Hui Zhai

  • Article |

    Ionization delays from ethyl iodide around a giant dipole resonance are measured by attosecond streaking spectroscopy. Using theoretical knowledge of the iodine atom as a reference, the contribution of the functional ethyl group can be obtained.

    • Shubhadeep Biswas
    • , Benjamin Förg
    •  & Matthias F. Kling

  • Letter |

    A passive, heralded and high-fidelity quantum memory network node has been realized, which connects simultaneously to two quantum channels provided by orthogonally aligned optical fibre cavities coupled with a single atom.

    • Manuel Brekenfeld
    • , Dominik Niemietz
    •  & Gerhard Rempe

  • News & Views |

    An ultra-cold atomic gas is used to image a phase transition in an iron pnictide with micrometre resolution.

    • James Analytis

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Atomic and molecular physics across other nature.com journals