The intellectual merit of this project is to exploit how to take advantage of the rich internal structure of ultra-cold diatomic polar molecules, towards the design of a highly tunable quantum simulator/computer. Polar molecules possess a permanent dipole moment,which can be manipulated with external fields, and which can lead to long-range anisotropic interactions. Two dimensional and one dimensional arrays of polar molecules trapped in optical lattices will be considered. The main idea is to use rotational dressed states of the molecules, which can be easily manipulated and controlled by external dc electric fields and by continuous microwave fields, as the spin (qubit) degrees of freedom of the quantum simulator/computer. Direct dipolar interactions, which are orders of magnitude stronger than those achievable using neutral atoms, will be used to coupled the spins. The goal is to investigate how to use this system to engineer topological states of matter, to simulate models used to describe magnetism in real materials, as well as others that may have no solid state analogs, and to process quantum information.
The broader impacts of this work arise,in part, from the educational and outreach aspects, including the training of graduate students and postdocs. These students will benefit from interacting also with experimental groups at JILA that are world-leaders in the planned research areas. Beyond this, the investigators will continue to contribute to community outreach programs, such as public lectures and accessible physics articles. They will also maintain a significant level of service to the physics community through organizing workshops, serving on review panels, and memberships on professional committees. This project contains interdisciplinary science involving application of the unique atomic structure of bi-alkali polar molecules towards the design of highly-controllable quantum simulators. These simulators are capable, on the one hand, of processing quantum information (QI science), and on the other hand, of generating fundamental insights into the physics of solid state systems, such as cuprate superconductors, transition metal oxides and geometrically frustrated magnetic insulators (material sciences).
