Many-body physics in degenerate alkali-lanthanide mixtures

POSTER

Abstract

Ultracold atomic mixtures have unlocked unprecedented opportunities to investigate few and many-body physics. With a degenerate alkali-lanthanide mixture, phenomena ranging from long-range phonon-mediated interactions, emergent pattern formations, collective spin physics, and impurity physics can be explored. Here we report a robust device that can generate a degenerate mixture of erbium and lithium atoms. The strong dipolar interactions, accessible selection of isotopes, and suitable inter and intra-species Feshbach resonances of the mixture make erbium and lithium an ideal system to work with. We image the mixture with a 0.6 NA high-resolution microscope objective.

*This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (Center for Ultracold Atoms PHY-2317134 and grant no. PHY-2207367), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (FA9550-22-1-0066), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Agreement No. HR00112490527), and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (2023-76156). J.K. and J.R. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 2141064.

Publication: J. Kalia, J. Rivera, R. R. Emran, W. J. Solorio Hernandez, K. Kwon, and R. J. Fletcher, Creation of a degenerate Bose-Bose mixture of erbium and lithium atoms, Phys. Rev. A 113, 013321 (2026).

Presenters

  • William J Solorio Hernandez

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Authors

  • William J Solorio Hernandez

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Rubaiya R Emran

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Jasmine Kalia

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Jared A Rivera

    • MIT, Department of Physics
  • Kiryang Kwon

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Richard J Fletcher

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology