Physics (Internal)

Ultracold fermions and bosons in Toronto

This event is part of the Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Series.

Abstract: I will give a progress report of two ultra-cold atom experiments underway at the University of Toronto. The first is a double well boson experiment, in which a Bose condensate of 87Rb is split by a tunnelling barrier. We observe matter wave interference from the split condensate when released, from which the relative phase of the condensates can be determined. Relative atom number, the conjugate variable to relative phase, can also be observed directly. We demonstrate counting at the atom shot noise level. The second experiment presented will be a two-dimensional optical lattice for ultra-cold fermionic 40K. We are developing site-resolved imaging of atoms in the lattice, in order to probe ordering in the planar lattice. Applications to quantum simulation of fermion lattice problems will be discussed.