Atomic and molecular physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • Letter |

    A two-level quantum system driven by an electromagnetic field can oscillate between its two states. The effects of these so-called Rabi oscillations are usually obscured in many-body systems by the variation in properties of the particles involved. Now, however, coherent many-body Rabi oscillations are observed in a vapour made up of several hundred cold rubidium atoms.

    • Y. O. Dudin
    • , L. Li
    •  & A. Kuzmich

  • News & Views |

    In two-dimensional systems, superfluidity occurs in the absence of the long-range order associated with Bose–Einstein condensates. This phenomenon is illustrated in the direct observation of superfluidity in a 2D atomic Bose gas.

    • Gretchen K. Campbell

  • Article |

    Quantum gases are useful toy models for the study of quantum magnetism. Exquisite control of a spinor gas of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice has now been demonstrated, opening up the exploration of quantum magnetism with high spins.

    • Jasper S. Krauser
    • , Jannes Heinze
    •  & Klaus Sengstock

  • News & Views |

    Optical vortices usually break up when they propagate through nonlinear media. Now, however, experiments show the helical structure of an infrared beam can survive a high-harmonic-generation process. This could lead to a table-top source of attosecond helical light pulses.

    • Serguei Patchkovskii
    •  & Michael Spanner

  • Letter |

    Optical vortices exhibit a corkscrew-like shape as they travel. The study of this phenomenon, known as singular optics, is now extended to the high-power regime where high-harmonic processes become evident. This type of radiation could help illuminate novel attosecond phenomena in atoms and molecules.

    • M. Zürch
    • , C. Kern
    •  & Ch. Spielmann

  • Letter |

    Two-dimensional Bose fluids—such as liquid-helium films, or confined ultracold atoms—cannot form a condensate, but become superfluid instead. Frictionless flow, proving superfluid behaviour, has now been observed in an ultracold two-dimensional Bose gas that is stirred with a laser beam.

    • Rémi Desbuquois
    • , Lauriane Chomaz
    •  & Jean Dalibard

  • News & Views |

    Hybrid traps for laser-cooled ions and neutral atoms make excellent cold-chemistry laboratories. Experiments now show that engineering quantum states can provide additional control for accessing and manipulating chemical reaction rates.

    • Paul S. Julienne

  • Letter |

    Chemical reactions between a single trapped ion and a condensate of ultracold neutral atoms are investigated by controlling the quantum states of both ion and atoms—revealing the effect of the hyperfine interaction on the reaction dynamics.

    • Lothar Ratschbacher
    • , Christoph Zipkes
    •  & Michael Köhl

  • Letter |

    Nuclear spin is seen as a robust qubit. Electrons can be used to ‘read’ to the nuclear state, but their presence causes decoherence. Researchers now show that this problem can be circumvented using a temporary spin state, thus enabling entanglement of the nuclear state at unprecedented speeds.

    • Vasileia Filidou
    • , Stephanie Simmons
    •  & John J. L. Morton

  • Letter |

    Density functional theory provides a powerful framework for probing electronic structure in many-body systems. A new functional for particles interacting via short-range potentials extends its applicability to ultracold atoms in optical lattices.

    • Ping Nang Ma
    • , Sebastiano Pilati
    •  & Xi Dai

  • Letter |

    A quantum memory that combines high-efficiency and long lifetime is now demonstrated. Employing a collective excitation, or spin wave, in an ensemble of atoms in a trap improves memory lifetime, while incorporating the trap into an optical ring cavity simultaneously aids higher retrieval efficiency.

    • Xiao-Hui Bao
    • , Andreas Reingruber
    •  & Jian-Wei Pan

  • Article |

    Diffraction of matter waves from crystalline structures has long been used to characterize underlying spatial order. The same principle offers a valuable—and potentially non-destructive—tool for probing the strongly correlated phases of ultracold atoms confined to optical lattices.

    • Bryce Gadway
    • , Daniel Pertot
    •  & Dominik Schneble

  • Letter |

    An interferometric implementation of Young’s double-slit experiment is used to probe quantum correlations that are manifest in the distribution of local spin fluctuations in a two-component degenerate Fermi gas.

    • Jakob Meineke
    • , Jean-Philippe Brantut
    •  & Tilman Esslinger

  • Review Article |

    Experimental progress in controlling and manipulating trapped atomic ions has opened the door for a series of proof-of-principle quantum simulations. This article reviews these experiments, together with the methods and tools that have enabled them, and provides an outlook on future directions in the field.

    • R. Blatt
    •  & C. F. Roos

  • Review Article |

    Experiments with ultracold quantum gases provide a platform for creating many-body systems that can be well controlled and whose parameters can be tuned over a wide range. These properties put these systems in an ideal position for simulating problems that are out of reach for classical computers. This review surveys key advances in this field and discusses the possibilities offered by this approach to quantum simulation.

    • Immanuel Bloch
    • , Jean Dalibard
    •  & Sylvain Nascimbène

  • Article |

    A demonstration of the ability to coherently control the collective attosecond dynamics of relativistic electrons driven through a plasma by an intense laser represents an important step in the development of techniques to manipulate and study extreme states of matter.

    • Antonin Borot
    • , Arnaud Malvache
    •  & Rodrigo Lopez-Martens

  • Letter |

    A cross-validation study comparing experimental findings obtained with a system of ultracold fermions with the results of a method based on computing contributions from millions of Feynman diagrams underlines the potential of the so-called bold diagrammatic Monte Carlo technique for solving problems in the area of strongly correlated quantum matter.

    • K. Van Houcke
    • , F. Werner
    •  & M. W. Zwierlein

  • News & Views |

    An experimental demonstration that the expansion of ultracold atoms in three dimensions can be frozen by disorder provides fertile ground for studies of metal–insulator transitions in disordered systems — including those with interacting particles.

    • Robin Kaiser

  • News & Views |

    Squeezed states push the limits of quantum measurement precision, but observing them is never straightforward. In spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates, an elegant algebra reveals squeezed states that would otherwise go unnoticed.

    • Austen Lamacraft

  • Letter |

    Squeezed states—which permit precision beyond the scope of Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation—are well established for spin-1/2 particles. Now an elegant demonstration of squeezing in spin-1 condensates generalizes the criteria for squeezed states to higher spin dimensions.

    • C. D. Hamley
    • , C. S. Gerving
    •  & M. S. Chapman

  • Letter |

    Measurements of Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlations in atomic gases near the Bose–Einstein condensation threshold reveal strong signatures of interactions between the constituent atoms, and establish such correlation measurements as a sensitive probe for the quantum properties of matter-wave sources.

    • A. Perrin
    • , R. Bücker
    •  & J. Schmiedmayer

  • Article |

    The transport measurements of an interacting fermionic quantum gas in an optical lattice provide a direct experimental realization of the Hubbard model—one of the central models for interacting electrons in solids—and give insights into the transport properties of many-body phases in condensed-matter physics.

    • Ulrich Schneider
    • , Lucia Hackermüller
    •  & Achim Rosch

  • Letter |

    According to Heisenberg, the more precisely, say, the position of a particle is measured, the less precisely we can determine its momentum. The uncertainty principle in its original form ignores, however, the unavoidable effect of recoil in the measuring device. An experimental test now validates an alternative relation, and the uncertainty principle in its original formulation is broken.

    • Jacqueline Erhart
    • , Stephan Sponar
    •  & Yuji Hasegawa

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