Low Temperature Physics in a Fermi-Hubbard Quantum Simulator

Quantum gas microscopy provides a unique toolkit to investigate the rich phases of the Fermi-Hubbard model, of interest to many quantum materials. Despite decades of intense study from analytical and numerical fronts, many open questions remain regarding the behavior at low-temperatures and intermediate doping, the regime relevant to cuprate high-temperature superconductors.

Leveraging a recent breakthrough in cooling in a cold-atom quantum simulator, we observe several novel phenomena at low temperatures in the Hubbard model. This includes the emergence of a pseudogap state and an enhanced susceptibility to rotational symmetry breaking (nematicity). Our work opens the door to improving our understanding of phases that have been historically challenging to access through classical simulations.