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A Mott insulator of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice

Nature volume 455, pages 204–207 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Strong interactions between electrons in a solid material can lead to surprising properties. A prime example is the Mott insulator, in which suppression of conductivity occurs as a result of interactions rather than a filled Bloch band1. Proximity to the Mott insulating phase in fermionic systems is the origin of many intriguing phenomena in condensed matter physics2, most notably high-temperature superconductivity3. The Hubbard model4, which encompasses the essential physics of the Mott insulator, also applies to quantum gases trapped in an optical lattice5,6. It is therefore now possible to access this regime with tools developed in atomic physics. However, an atomic Mott insulator has so far been realized only with a gas of bosons7, which lack the rich and peculiar nature of fermions. Here we report the formation of a Mott insulator of a repulsively interacting two-component Fermi gas in an optical lattice. It is identified by three features: a drastic suppression of doubly occupied lattice sites, a strong reduction of the compressibility inferred from the response of double occupancy to an increase in atom number, and the appearance of a gapped mode in the excitation spectrum. Direct control of the interaction strength allows us to compare the Mott insulating regime and the non-interacting regime without changing tunnel-coupling or confinement. Our results pave the way for further studies of the Mott insulator, including spin-ordering and ultimately the question of d-wave superfluidity6,8.

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Figure 1: Energy spectrum of a Fermi gas in an optical lattice with an underlying confining potential.
Figure 2: Double occupancy in the non-interacting and Mott insulating regimes.
Figure 3: The transition to an incompressible sample.
Figure 4: Emergence of a gapped mode.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Blatter, S. Huber, M. Köhl, C. Kollath, L. Pollet, N. Prokof’ev, M. Rigol, M. Sigrist, M. Troyer and W. Zwerger for discussions. Funding was provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), the EU projects Optical Lattices and Quantum Information (OLAQUI) and Scalable Quantum Computing with Light and Atoms (SCALA) and the Quantum Science and Technology (QSIT) project of ETH Zurich.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Robert Jördens and Niels Strohmaier: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Affiliations

  1. Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

    Robert Jördens, Niels Strohmaier, Kenneth Günter, Henning Moritz & Tilman Esslinger

  2. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, École Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France

    Kenneth Günter

Authors
  1. Robert Jördens
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  2. Niels Strohmaier
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  3. Kenneth Günter
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  4. Henning Moritz
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  5. Tilman Esslinger
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henning Moritz.

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Jördens, R., Strohmaier, N., Günter, K. et al. A Mott insulator of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice. Nature 455, 204–207 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07244

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