This CAREER award supports an experimental program to create and study exotic forms of matter by developing the enabling technology for the quantum manipulation of dipolar atoms. Ultracold gases of highly magnetic atoms, such as dysprosium, offer opportunities to explore strongly correlated matter in the presence of long-range interactions in a manner difficult to achieve in other experimental settings. Techniques will be developed to perform the first laser cooling and trapping---and subsequent confinement in optical lattices---of dysprosium. This achievement will lead to the investigation of exotic states of matter that, in several cases, underlie proposed descriptions of poorly understood, though technologically relevant, condensed matter materials that do not obey standard Fermi liquid theory. Specifically, investigation of the ground states of quantum liquid crystals using fermionic Dy, as well as explorations of the inhomogeneous phases predicted by the extended Bose-Hubbard (EBH) model, will be possible through the cooling of Dy to degeneracy. Looking beyond quantum liquid crystal and EBH physics, developing ultracold Dy technology will lead to the exploitation of both Dy's telecom qubit transition and Dy's colossal magnetic moment for the realization of telecom-band quantum information processing and the development of ultra-high sensitivity, high-resolution atom chip microscopy of exotic condensed matter systems.
Complementing the research program is a plan to teach physics through everyday technology: Combining the theme of GPS technology with the technical expertise drawn from this research program, core physics principles will be taught to undergraduate physics majors and high school "teacher leaders" through the development of a laboratory module on atomic clocks. This module will serve three educational missions: contributing to the improvement of K-12 student achievement in science by training high school teacher leaders via the EnLiST NSF Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; augmenting the PHYS 403 Modern Experimental Physics lab that introduces upper-level undergraduate physics majors to skills and topics required for cutting-edge careers in science and technology; and providing hands-on laboratory experience for participants in a Master's Science Teaching Program, an upcoming accreditation program for Illinois teachers provided by the Department of Physics.
The creation of Dy quantum gases has opened up many new avenues of research for exploring the ways in which quantum matter organizes. Ultracold gases of extraordinarily magnetic atoms, such as dysprosium, offer opportunities to explore strongly correlated matter in the presence of the long-range, anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction (DDI). We created the first ultracold and quantum gases of Dy, specifically a Bose-Einstein condensate and a degenerate Fermi gas of this highly magnetic and high-spin atom. This work points the way toward emulating technologically relevant, though poorly understood, materials in a manner in which we may learn about their operating principles without worry about unwanted material disorder or uncontrolled interactions. Specifically, our accomplishments include: 1) Created the world’s first magneto-optical trap (MOT) of Dy 2) Observed a novel anisotropic sub-Doppler laser cooling phenomenon 3) Performed the first precision laser spectroscopy of laser cooling transitions in Dy 4) Created the world’s first Dy Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) using crossed optical dipole traps (ODT) loaded from an unusual blue-detuned narrow-line MOT 5) Created the world’s first Dy degenerate Fermi gas (DFG) 6) Made the first observations of the dipolar nature of these BECs and DFGs 7) Observed the first Feshbach resonances in Dy, recording many low-field resonances while noting a novel temperature dependance to the resonances 8) Co-wrote one of the first theory proposals for observing quantum liquid crystals in dipolar gases 9) Co-wrote a theory proposal for the generation of large Abelian gauge fields and spin-orbit coupling in large-spin atoms such as Dy without the severe concomitant heating from spontaneous emission suffered in experiments using alkali-metal atoms. These Dy experiments, first performed during this NSF CAREER grant, have helped to open a new field of exploration into the quantum many-body physics of highly magnetic and high-spin quantum gases and may lead to deeper understanding of the quantum many-body physics underlying technologically relevant materials.
