Collective P-Wave Orbital Dynamics of Ultracold Fermions

Published

September 28, 2021

Author(s)

Mikhail Mamaev, Peiru He, Thomas Bilitewski, Vijin Venu, Joseph Thywissen, Ana Maria Rey

Abstract

We introduce a protocol to observe p-wave interactions in ultracold fermionic atoms loaded in a 3D optical lattice. Our scheme uses specific motionally excited band states to form an orbital subspace immune to band relaxation. A laser dressing is applied to dress the orbital states, reducing their differential kinetic energy and making their dispersion highly isotropic. When combined with a moderate increase of the scattering volume via Feshbach resonance, the effect of p-wave interactions between the orbitals can be observed from the system dynamics on realistic timescales. By considering the evolution of ferromagnetic product states, we further explore parameter regimes where collective enhancement of p-wave physics facilitated by a many-body gap enables us to map the complex extended Fermi-Hubbard Hamiltonian of the system to a simple one-axis twisting model. Experimental protocols to probe the resulting many-body dynamics, state preparation, and detection are presented, accounting for particle loss, spin-orbit coupling and doping.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Volume

127

Issue

143401

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.143401

Local Download

Keywords

orbital physics, P-wave interactions, quantum magentism, ultracold fermions

Citation

Mamaev, M. , He, P. , Bilitewski, T. , Venu, V. , Thywissen, J. and Rey, A. (2021), Collective P-Wave Orbital Dynamics of Ultracold Fermions, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.143401, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932273 (Accessed October 11, 2025)