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Ultracold polar molecules provide an excellent platform to study quantum many-body spin dynamics, which has become accessible in the recently realized low entropy quantum gas of polar molecules in an optical lattice. To obtain a detailed understanding for the molecular formation process in the lattice, we prepare a density distribution where lattice sites are either empty or occupied by a doublon composed of a bosonic atom interacting with a fermionic atom. By letting this disordered, out-of-equilibrium system evolve from a well-defined initial condition, we observe clear effects on pairing that arise from inter-species interactions, a higher partial wave Feshbach resonance, and excited Bloch-band population. When only the lighter fermions are allowed to tunnel in the three-dimensional (3D) lattice, the system dynamics can be well described by theory. However, in a regime where both fermions and bosons can tunnel, we encounter correlated dynamics that is beyond the current capability of numerical simulations. Furthermore, we show that we can probe the microscopic distribution of the atomic gases in the lattice by measuring the inelastic loss of doublons. These techniques realize tools that are generically applicable to heteronuclear diatomic systems in optical lattices and can shed light on molecule production as well as dynamics of a Bose-Fermi mixture., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures

Experimental control of magnetic Fano-Feshbach resonances in ultracold $^{40}$K Fermi gases, using radio-frequency (RF) fields, is demonstrated. Spectroscopic measurements are made of three molecular levels within 50 MHz of the atomic continuum, along with their variation with magnetic field. Modifying the scattering properties by an RF field is shown by measuring the loss profile versus magnetic field. This work provides the high accuracy locations of ground molecular states near the s-wave Fano-Feshbach resonance, which can be used to study the crossover regime from a Bose-Einstein condensate to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid in presence of an RF field., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

In this work we demonstrate a dynamic process in which SO coupling can coherently produce s-wave Feshbach molecules from a fully polarized Fermi gas, and can induce a coherent oscillation between Feshbach molecules and spin polarized gas. For comparison, we also show that such phenomena are absent if the inter-component coupling is momentum-independent. This demonstrates experimentally that SO coupling does provide finite matrix element between a singlet state and a triplet state, and therefore, implies the bound pairs of a system with SO coupling have triplet p-wave component, which can become topological superfluid by further cooling these pairs to condensation and confining them to lower dimension., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

We use laser light near-resonant with a molecular bound-to-bound transition to control a magnetic Feshbach resonance in ultracold Fermi gases of $^{40}$K atoms. The spectrum of excited molecular states is measured by applying a laser field that couples the ground Feshbach molecular state to electronically excited molecular states. Nine strong bound-to-bound resonances are observed below the $^{2}P_{1/2}+^{2}S_{1/2}$ threshold. We use radio-frequency spectroscopy to characterize the laser-dressed bound state near a specific bound-to-bound resonance and show clearly the shift of the magnetic Feshbach resonance using light with negligible atomic loss. The demonstrated technology could be used to modify interatomic interactions with high spatial and temporal resolutions in the crossover regime from a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

We investigate experimentally and theoretically radio-frequency spectroscopy and pairing of a spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gas of $^{40}$K atoms near a Feshbach resonance at $B_{0}=202.2$ G. Experimentally, the integrated spectroscopy is measured, showing characteristic blue and red shifts in the atomic and molecular responses, respectively, with increasing spin-orbit coupling. Theoretically, a smooth transition from atomic to molecular responses in the momentum-resolved spectroscopy is predicted, with a clear signature of anisotropic pairing at and below resonance. Our many-body prediction agrees qualitatively well with the observed spectroscopy near the Feshbach resonance., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Supercedes 1302.0559

The binding energy of Feshbach molecules from a two component Fermi gas of $^{40}$K atoms has been experimentally measured with the momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy. Comparing with the radio-frequency spectroscopy, in the present experiment the signal of unpaired (free atoms) and the bound molecules can be directly observed and the binding energy can be simultaneously determined in a single running experiment. The energy-momentum dispersion spectra of the strongly interacting ultracold Fermi gas in BEC side are also measured and reconstructed. The present experimental technology of the momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy can be easily extended to perform spatially momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy and to obtain the response spectra of a homogeneous system in the local density approximation., Comment: 5pages, 3 figures, appear in Phys. Rev. A

We report the experiment on probing the one-body spectral function in a trapped non-interacting $^{40}$K Fermi gas by means of the momentum-resolved Raman spectroscopy The experimental result is in good agreement with the expected quadratic dispersion in the non-interacting regime. Through the comparison with the radio-frequency spectrum, we found that the Raman spectrum shows some new characteristics., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, appear in Phys. Rev. A

Spin-orbit coupling plays an increasingly important role in the modern condensed matter physics. For instance, it gives birth to topological insulators and topological superconductors. Quantum simulation of spin-orbit coupling using ultracold Fermi gases will offer opportunities to study these new phenomena in a more controllable setting. Here we report the first experimental study of a spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas. We observe spin dephasing in spin dynamics and momentum distribution asymmetry in the equilibrium state as hallmarks of spin-orbit coupling. We also observe evidences of Lifshitz transition where the topology of Fermi surfaces change. This serves as an important first step toward finding Majorana fermions in this system., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

We present a simple experiment of creating an effective vector gauge potential for Bose-Einstein condensed $^{87}$Rb in the F=2 hyperfine ground state using two crossed 1064 $nm$ optical dipole trap lasers as the Raman beams. Due to the far-detuning from the single-photon resonance with the electronically excited state, the spontaneous emission is strongly reduced, at the same time, the moderate strength of the Raman coupling still can be achieved. The atoms at the far detuning of the Raman coupling are loaded adiabatically into the dressed states by ramping the homogeneous bias magnetic field to resonance and the different energy dressed states are studied. This experiment is easily extended to produce synthetic magnetic or electric field from a spatial or time dependence of the effective vector potential., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

We demonstrate clear collective atomic recoil motion in a dilute, momentum-squeezed, ultra-cold degenerate fermion gas by circumventing the effects of Pauli blocking. Although gain from bosonic stimulation is necessarily absent because the quantum gas obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics, collective atomic recoil motion from the underlying wave-mixing process is clearly visible. With a single pump pulse of the proper polarization, we observe two mutually-perpendicular wave-mixing processes occurring simultaneously. Our experiments also indicate that the red-blue pump detuning asymmetry observed with Bose-Einstein condensates does not occur with fermions.