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At the interface between two fluid layers in relative motion, infinitesimal fluctuations can be exponentially amplified, inducing vorticity and the breakdown of the laminar flow. This process, known as the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, is responsible for many familiar phenomena observed in the atmosphere and in the oceans, as well as in astrophysical objects, being known as one of the paradigmatic routes to turbulence in fluid mechanics. While shear-flow instabilities in classical fluids have been extensively observed in various contexts, controlled experiments in the presence of quantized circulation are comparatively very few. Here, we engineer two counter-rotating atomic superflows, a configuration that in classical inviscid fluids is unstable via the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. We observe how the contact interface, i.e. the shear layer, develops into an ordered circular array of quantized vortices, which loses stability and rolls up into vortex clusters. We extract the instability growth rates and find that they obey the same scaling relations across different superfluid regimes, ranging from weakly-interacting bosonic to strongly-correlated fermionic pair condensates. The measured scalings, reproduced by numerical simulations and well described by a microscopic point-vortex model, are consistent with the classical hydrodynamic Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of a finite-width shear layer. Our results establish interesting connections between vortex arrays and shear-flow instabilities, suggesting a possible interpretation of the observed quantized vortex dynamics as a manifestation of the underlying unstable flow. Moreover, they open the way for exploring a wealth of out-of-equilibrium phenomena, from vortex-matter phase transitions to the spontaneous emergence and decay of two-dimensional quantum turbulence.

We report on the realization of a novel degenerate mixture of ultracold fermionic lithium and chromium atoms. Based on an all-optical approach, with an overall duty-cycle of about 13 seconds, we produce large and degenerate samples of more than 2$\times 10^5$ $^6$Li atoms and $10^5$ $^{53}$Cr atoms, with both species exhibiting normalized temperatures of about $T/T_{F}$=0.25. Additionally, through the exploitation of a crossed bichromatic optical dipole trap, we can controllably vary the density and degree of degeneracy of the two components almost independently, and widely tune the lithium-to-chromium density ratio. Our $^{6}$Li-$^{53}$Cr Fermi mixture opens the way to the investigation of a variety of exotic few- and many-body regimes of quantum matter, and it appears as an optimally-suited system to realize ultracold paramagnetic polar molecules, characterized by both electric and magnetic dipole moments. Ultimately, our strategy also provides an efficient pathway to produce dipolar Fermi gases, or spin-mixtures, of ultracold $^{53}$Cr atoms., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures

The Hall effect, which originates from the motion of charged particles in magnetic fields, has deep consequences for the description of materials, extending far beyond condensed matter. Understanding such an effect in interacting systems represents a fundamental challenge, even for small magnetic fields. In this work, we used an atomic quantum simulator in which we tracked the motion of ultracold fermions in two-leg ribbons threaded by artificial magnetic fields. Through controllable quench dynamics, we measured the Hall response for a range of synthetic tunneling and atomic interaction strengths. We unveil a universal interaction-independent behavior above an interaction threshold, in agreement with theoretical analyses. The ability to reach hard-to-compute regimes demonstrates the power of quantum simulation to describe strongly correlated topological states of matter., Comment: Main Text: 6 pages, 4 figures; Supplementary Material: 9 pages, 10 figures

Persistent currents in annular geometries have played an important role in disclosing the quantum phase coherence of superconductors and mesoscopic electronic systems. Ultracold atomic gases in multiply connected traps also exhibit long-lived supercurrents, and have attracted much interest both for fundamental studies of superfluid dynamics and as prototypes for atomtronic circuits. Here, we report on the realization of supercurrents in homogeneous, tunable fermionic rings. We gain exquisite, rapid control over quantized persistent currents in all regimes of the BCS-BEC crossover through a universal phase-imprinting technique, attaining on-demand circulations $w$ as high as 9. High-fidelity read-out of the superfluid circulation state is achieved by exploiting an interferometric protocol, which also yields local information about the superfluid phase around the ring. In the absence of externally introduced perturbations, we find the induced metastable supercurrents to be as long-lived as the atomic sample. Conversely, we trigger and inspect the supercurrent decay by inserting a single small obstacle within the ring. For circulations higher than a critical value, the quantized current is observed to dissipate via the emission of vortices, i.e., quantized phase slips, which we directly image, in good agreement with numerical simulations. The critical circulation at which the superflow becomes unstable is found to depend starkly on the interaction strength, taking its maximum value for the unitary Fermi gas. Our results demonstrate fast and accurate control of quantized collective excitations in a macroscopic quantum system, and establish strongly interacting fermionic superfluids as excellent candidates for atomtronic applications., Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures

We investigate ultracold collisions in a novel mixture of $^6$Li and $^{53}$Cr fermionic atoms, discovering more than 50 interspecies Feshbach resonances via loss spectroscopy. Building a full coupled-channel model, we unambiguously characterize the $^{6}$Li-$^{53}$Cr scattering properties and yield predictions for other isotopic pairs. In particular, we identify various Feshbach resonances that enable the controlled tuning of elastic $s$- and $p$-wave $^{6}$Li-$^{53}$Cr interactions. Our studies thus make lithium-chromium mixtures emerge as optimally-suited platforms for the experimental search of elusive few- and many-body regimes of highly-correlated fermionic matter, and for the realization of a new class of ultracold polar molecules possessing both electric and magnetic dipole moments., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables

We report the experimental realization of a new kind of optical lattice for ultra-cold atoms where arbitrarily large separation between the sites can be achieved without renouncing to the stability of ordinary lattices. Two collinear lasers, with slightly different commensurate wavelengths and retroreflected on a mirror, generate a superlattice potential with a periodic "beat-note" profile where the regions with large amplitude modulation provide the effective potential minima for the atoms. To prove the analogy with a standard large spacing optical lattice we study Bloch oscillations of a Bose Einstein condensate with negligible interactions in the presence of a small force. The observed dynamics between sites separated by ten microns for times exceeding one second proves the high stability of the potential. This novel lattice is the ideal candidate for the coherent manipulation of atomic samples at large spatial separations and might find direct application in atom-based technologies like trapped atom interferometers and quantum simulators., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

In quantum fluids, the quantisation of circulation forbids the diffusion of a vortex swirling flow seen in classical viscous fluids. Yet, a quantum vortex accelerating in a superfluid may lose its energy into acoustic radiation, in a similar way an electric charge decelerates upon emitting photons. The dissipation of vortex energy underlies central problems in quantum hydrodynamics, such as the decay of quantum turbulence, highly relevant to systems as varied as neutron stars, superfluid helium and atomic condensates. A deep understanding of the elementary mechanisms behind irreversible vortex dynamics has been a goal for decades, but it is complicated by the shortage of conclusive experimental signatures. Here, we address this challenge by realising a programmable quantum vortex collider in a planar, homogeneous atomic Fermi superfluid with tunable inter-particle interactions. We create on-demand vortex configurations and monitor their evolution, taking advantage of the accessible time and length scales of our ultracold Fermi gas. Engineering collisions within and between vortex-antivortex pairs allows us to decouple relaxation of the vortex energy due to sound emission and interactions with normal fluid, i.e. mutual friction. We directly visualise how the annihilation of vortex dipoles radiates a sound pulse in the superfluid. Further, our few-vortex experiments extending across different superfluid regimes suggest that fermionic quasiparticles localised inside the vortex core contribute significantly to dissipation, opening the route to exploring new pathways for quantum turbulence decay, vortex by vortex., Comment: 7+9 pages, 4+7 figures

Recent experiments have revitalized the interest in a Fermi gas of ultracold atoms with strong repulsive interactions. In spite of its seeming simplicity, this system exhibits a complex behavior, resulting from the competing action of two distinct instabilities: ferromagnetism, which promotes spin anticorrelations and domain formation; and pairing, that renders the repulsive fermionic atoms unstable towards forming weakly bound bosonic molecules. The breakdown of the homogeneous repulsive Fermi liquid arising from such concurrent mechanisms has been recently observed in real time through pump-probe spectroscopic techniques [A. Amico et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 253602 (2018)]. These studies also lead to the discovery of an emergent metastable many-body state, an unpredicted quantum emulsion of anticorrelated fermions and pairs. Here, we investigate in detail the properties of such an exotic regime by studying the evolution of kinetic and release energies, the spectral response and coherence of the unpaired fermionic population, and its spin-density noise correlations. All our observations consistently point to a low-temperature heterogeneous phase, where paired and unpaired fermions macroscopically coexist while featuring micro-scale phase separation. Our findings open new appealing avenues for the exploration of quantum emulsions and also possibly of inhomogeneous superfluid regimes, where pair condensation may coexist with magnetic order., Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures

The dc Josephson effect provides a powerful phase-sensitive tool for investigating superfluid order parameters. We report on the observation of dc Josephson supercurrents in strongly interacting fermionic superfluids across a tunnelling barrier in the absence of any applied potential difference. For sufficiently strong barriers, we observe a sinusoidal current-phase relation, in agreement with Josephson's seminal prediction. We map out the zero-resistance state and its breakdown as a function of junction parameters, extracting the Josephson critical current behaviour. By comparing our results with an analytic model, we determine the pair condensate fraction throughout the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer - Bose-Einstein Condensation crossover. Our work suggests that coherent Josephson transport may be used to pin down superfluid order parameters in diverse atomic systems, even in the presence of strong correlations.

We study the onset of dissipation in an atomic Josephson junction between Fermi superfluids in the molecular Bose-Einstein condensation limit of strong attraction. Our simulations identify the critical population imbalance and the maximum Josephson current delimiting dissipationless and dissipative transport, in quantitative agreement with recent experiments. We unambiguously link dissipation to vortex ring nucleation and dynamics, demonstrating that quantum phase slips are responsible for the observed resistive current. Our work directly connects microscopic features with macroscopic dissipative transport, providing a comprehensive description of vortex ring dynamics in three-dimensional inhomogeneous constricted superfluids at zero and finite temperatures., Comment: To be published in PRL

Ultracold molecules have experienced increasing attention in recent years. Compared to ultracold atoms, they possess several unique properties that make them perfect candidates for the implementation of new quantum-technological applications in several fields, from quantum simulation to quantum sensing and metrology. In particular, ultracold molecules of two-electron atoms (such as strontium or ytterbium) also inherit the peculiar properties of these atomic species, above all the possibility to access metastable electronic states via direct excitation on optical clock transitions with ultimate sensitivity and accuracy. In this paper we report on the production and coherent manipulation of molecular bound states of two fermionic $^{173}$Yb atoms in different electronic (orbital) states $^1$S$_0$ and $^3$P$_0$ in proximity of a scattering resonance involving atoms in different spin and electronic states, called orbital Feshbach resonance. We demonstrate that orbital molecules can be coherently photoassociated starting from a gas of ground-state atoms in a three-dimensional optical lattices by observing several photoassociation and photodissociation cycles. We also show the possibility to coherently control the molecular internal state by using Raman-assisted transfer to swap the nuclear spin of one of the atoms forming the molecule, thus demonstrating a powerful manipulation and detection tool of these molecular bound states. Finally, by exploiting this peculiar detection technique we provide first information on the lifetime of the molecular states in a many-body setting, paving the way towards future investigations of strongly interacting Fermi gases in a still unexplored regime., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

We exploit a time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopic technique to study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of an ultracold two-component Fermi gas, selectively quenched to strong repulsion along the upper branch of a broad Feshbach resonance. For critical interactions, we find the rapid growth of short-range anti-correlations between repulsive fermions to initially overcome concurrent pairing processes. At longer evolution times, these two competing mechanisms appear to macroscopically coexist in a short-range correlated state of fermions and pairs, unforeseen thus far. Our work provides fundamental insights into the fate of a repulsive Fermi gas, and offers new perspectives towards the exploration of complex dynamical regimes of fermionic matter., Comment: 5+11 pages, 4+11 figures, 54 references

We produce Bose-Einstein condensates of $^{162}$Dy atoms employing an innovative technique based on a resonator-enhanced optical trap that allows efficient loading from the magneto-optical trap and fast evaporation. We characterize the scattering properties of the ultracold atoms for magnetic fields between 6 and 30 G. In addition to the typical chaotic distribution of narrow Feshbach resonances in Lanthanides, we discover two rather isolated broad features at around 22 G and 27 G. A characterization using the complementary measurements of losses, thermalization, anisotropic expansion and molecular binding energy points towards resonances of predominant s-wave character. Such resonances will ease the investigation of quantum phenomena relying on the interplay between dipole and contact interactions.

Self-bound quantum droplets are a newly discovered phase in the context of ultracold atoms. In this work we report their experimental realization following the original proposal by Petrov [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 155302 (2015)], using an attractive bosonic mixture. In this system spherical droplets form due to the balance of competing attractive and repulsive forces, provided by the mean-field energy close to the collapse threshold and the first-order correction due to quantum fluctuations. Thanks to an optical levitating potential with negligible residual confinement we observe self-bound droplets in free space and we characterize the conditions for their formation as well as their equilibrium properties. This work sets the stage for future studies on quantum droplets, from the measurement of their peculiar excitation spectrum, to the exploration of their superfluid nature.

We report on the measurement of the scattering properties of ultracold $^{174}$Yb bosons in a three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice. Site occupancy in an atomic Mott insulator is resolved with high-precision spectroscopy on an ultranarrow optical clock transition. Scattering lengths and loss rate coefficients for $^{174}$Yb atoms in different collisional channels involving the ground state $^1$S$_0$ and the metastable $^3$P$_0$ are derived. These studies set important constraints for future experimental studies of two-electron atoms for quantum-technological applications., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

We study the emergence of dissipation in an atomic Josephson junction between weakly-coupled superfluid Fermi gases. We find that vortex-induced phase slippage is the dominant microscopic source of dissipation across the BEC-BCS crossover. We explore different dynamical regimes by tuning the bias chemical potential between the two superfluid reservoirs. For small excitations, we observe dissipation and phase coherence to coexist, with a resistive current followed by well-defined Josephson oscillations. We link the junction transport properties to the phase-slippage mechanism, finding that vortex nucleation is primarily responsible for the observed trends of conductance and critical current. For large excitations, we observe the irreversible loss of coherence between the two superfluids, and transport cannot be described only within an uncorrelated phase-slip picture. Our findings open new directions for investigating the interplay between dissipative and superfluid transport in strongly correlated Fermi systems, and general concepts in out-of-equlibrium quantum systems., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures + Supplemental Material

Mid infrared (MIR) photonics is a key region for molecular physics [1]. High-resolution spectroscopy in the 1--10 {\mu}m region, though, has never been fully tackled for the lack of widely-tunable and practical light sources. Indeed, all solutions proposed thus far suffer from at least one of three issues: they are feasible only in a narrow spectral range; the power available for spectroscopy is limited; the frequency accuracy is poor. Here, we present a setup for high-resolution spectroscopy that can be applied in the whole 1--10 {\mu}m range by combining the power of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) and the accuracy achievable by difference frequency generation using an OP-GaP crystal. The frequency is measured against a primary frequency standard using the Italian metrological fibre link network. We demonstrate the performance of the setup by measuring a vibrational transition in a highly-excited metastable state of CO around 6 {\mu}m with 11 digits of precision, four orders of magnitude better than the value available in the literature [2]., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

We explore the interplay between tunneling and interatomic interactions in the dynamics of a bosonic Josephson junction. We tune the scattering length of an atomic $^{39}$K Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a double-well trap to investigate regimes inaccessible to other superconducting or superfluid systems. In the limit of small-amplitude oscillations, we study the transition from Rabi to plasma oscillations by crossing over from attractive to repulsive interatomic interactions. We observe a critical slowing down in the oscillation frequency by increasing the strength of an attractive interaction up to the point of a quantum phase transition. With sufficiently large initial oscillation amplitude and repulsive interactions the system enters the macroscopic quantum self-trapping regime, where we observe coherent undamped oscillations with a self-sustained average imbalance of the relative well population. The exquisite agreement between theory and experiments enables the observation of a broad range of many body coherent dynamical regimes driven by tunable tunneling energy, interactions and external forces, with applications spanning from atomtronics to quantum metrology., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, supplemental materials are included

In the domain of quantum degenerate atomic gases, much interest has been raised recently by the use of Lanthanide atoms with large magnetic moments, in particular Dysprosium and Erbium. These species have been successfully brought to quantum degeneracy and are now excellent candidates for quantum simulations of physical phenom- ena due to long-range interactions. In this short article, we report on the progresses in the construction of a new experiment on Bose-Einstein condensation of Dysprosium atoms. After completing the vacuum and the laser setups, a magneto-optical trap on the narrow 626nm 162Dy transition has been realized and characterized. The prospects for future experiments are brie y discussed.

We employ radio-frequency spectroscopy to investigate a polarized spin-mixture of ultracold ${}^6$Li atoms close to a broad Feshbach scattering resonance. Focusing on the regime of strong repulsive interactions, we observe well-defined coherent quasiparticles even for unitarity-limited interactions. We characterize the many-body system by extracting the key properties of repulsive Fermi polarons: the energy $E_+$, the effective mass $m^*$, the residue $Z$ and the decay rate $\Gamma$. Above a critical interaction, $E_+$ is found to exceed the Fermi energy of the bath while $m^*$ diverges and even turns negative, thereby indicating that the repulsive Fermi liquid state becomes energetically and thermodynamically unstable., Comment: 6 + 12 pages, 4 + 6 figures, 57 references

We demonstrate a novel way of synthesizing spin-orbit interactions in ultracold quantum gases, based on a single-photon optical clock transition coupling two long-lived electronic states of two-electron $^{173}$Yb atoms. By mapping the electronic states onto effective sites along a synthetic "electronic" dimension, we have engineered synthetic fermionic ladders with tunable magnetic fluxes. We have detected the spin-orbit coupling with fiber-link-enhanced clock spectroscopy and directly measured the emergence of chiral edge currents, probing them as a function of the magnetic field flux. These results open new directions for the investigation of topological states of matter with ultracold atomic gases., Comment: Minor changes with respect to v1 (we have corrected some typos, fixed the use of some mathematical symbols, added one reference)

Ferromagnetism is a manifestation of strong repulsive interactions between itinerant fermions in condensed matter. Whether short-ranged repulsion alone is sufficient to stabilize ferromagnetic correlations in the absence of other effects, like peculiar band dispersions or orbital couplings, is however unclear. Here, we investigate ferromagnetism in the minimal framework of an ultracold Fermi gas with short-range repulsive interactions tuned via a Feshbach resonance. While fermion pairing characterises the ground state, our experiments provide signatures suggestive of a metastable Stoner-like ferromagnetic phase supported by strong repulsion in excited scattering states. We probe the collective spin response of a two-spin mixture engineered in a magnetic domain-wall-like configuration, and reveal a substantial increase of spin susceptibility while approaching a critical repulsion strength. Beyond this value, we observe the emergence of a time-window of domain immiscibility, indicating the metastability of the initial ferromagnetic state. Our findings establish an important connection between dynamical and equilibrium properties of strongly-correlated Fermi gases, pointing to the existence of a ferromagnetic instability., Comment: 8 + 17 pages, 4 + 8 figures, 44 + 19 references

Symmetry-breaking quantum phase transitions play a key role in several condensed matter, cosmology and nuclear physics theoretical models. Its observation in real systems is often hampered by finite temperatures and limited control of the system parameters. In this work we report for the first time the experimental observation of the full quantum phase diagram across a transition where the spatial parity symmetry is broken. Our system is made of an ultra-cold gas with tunable attractive interactions trapped in a spatially symmetric double-well potential. At a critical value of the interaction strength, we observe a continuous quantum phase transition where the gas spontaneously localizes in one well or the other, thus breaking the underlying symmetry of the system. Furthermore, we show the robustness of the asymmetric state against controlled energy mismatch between the two wells. This is the result of hysteresis associated with an additional discontinuous quantum phase transition that we fully characterize. Our results pave the way to the study of quantum critical phenomena at finite temperature, the investigation of macroscopic quantum tunneling of the order parameter in the hysteretic regime and the production of strongly quantum entangled states at critical points., Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. A new revised version has been accepted for publication in Nature Physics

Global Positioning System (GPS) dissemination of frequency standards is ubiquitous at present, providing the most widespread time and frequency reference for the majority of industrial and research applications worldwide. On the other hand, the ultimate limits of the GPS presently curb further advances in high-precision, scientific and industrial applications relying on this dissemination scheme. Here, we demonstrate that these limits can be reliably overcome even in laboratories without a local atomic clock by replacing the GPS with a 642-km-long optical fiber link to a remote primary caesium frequency standard. Through this configuration we stably address the $^1$S$_0$---$^3$P$_0$ clock transition in an ultracold gas of $^{173}$Yb, with a precision that exceeds the possibilities of a GPS-based measurement, dismissing the need for a local clock infrastructure to perform high-precision tasks beyond GPS limit. We also report an improvement of two orders of magnitude in the accuracy on the transition frequency reported in literature.

We investigate the superfluid-insulator transition of one-dimensional interacting Bosons in both deep and shallow periodic potentials. We compare a theoretical analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulations in continuum space and Luttinger liquid approach with experiments on ultracold atoms with tunable interactions and optical lattice depth. Experiments and theory are in excellent agreement. It provides a quantitative determination of the critical parameter for the Mott transition and defines the regime of validity of widely used approximate models, namely the Bose-Hubbard and sine-Gordon models, Comment: Technical problem in references fixed. Text and figures identical to version 1

We report on the experimental observation of a strongly interacting gas of ultracold two-electron fermions with orbital degree of freedom and magnetically tunable interactions. This realization has been enabled by the demonstration of a novel kind of Feshbach resonance occurring in the scattering of two 173Yb atoms in different nuclear and electronic states. The strongly interacting regime at resonance is evidenced by the observation of anisotropic hydrodynamic expansion of the two-orbital Fermi gas. These results pave the way towards the realization of new quantum states of matter with strongly correlated fermions with orbital degree of freedom., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We report on the observation of the Josephson effect between two strongly interacting fermionic superfluids coupled through a thin tunneling barrier. We prove that the relative population and phase are canonically conjugate dynamical variables, coherently oscillating throughout the entire crossover from molecular Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) to Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluids. We measure the plasma frequency and we extract the Josephson coupling energy, both exhibiting a non-monotonic behavior with a maximum near the crossover regime. We also observe the transition from coherent to dissipative dynamics, which we directly ascribe to the propagation of vortices through the superfluid bulk. Our results highlight the robust nature of resonant superfluids, opening the door to the study of the dynamics of superfluid Fermi systems in the presence of strong correlations and fluctuations., Comment: 12 pages, 11 Figures

In ultracold atoms settings, inelastic light scattering is a preeminent technique to reveal static and dynamic properties at nonzero momentum. In this work, we investigate an array of one-dimensional trapped Bose gases, by measuring both the energy and the momentum imparted to the system via light scattering experiments. The measurements are performed in the weak perturbation regime, where these two quantities - the energy and momentum transferred - are expected to be related to the dynamical structure factor of the system. We discuss this relation, with special attention to the role of in-trap dynamics on the transferred momentum.

Chiral edge states are a hallmark of quantum Hall physics. In electronic systems, they appear as a macroscopic consequence of the cyclotron orbits induced by a magnetic field, which are naturally truncated at the physical boundary of the sample. Here we report on the experimental realization of chiral edge states in a ribbon geometry with an ultracold gas of neutral fermions subjected to an artificial gauge field. By imaging individual sites along a synthetic dimension, we detect the existence of the edge states, investigate the onset of chirality as a function of the bulk-edge coupling, and observe the edge-cyclotron orbits induced during a quench dynamics. The realization of fermionic chiral edge states is a fundamental achievement, which opens the door towards experiments including edge state interferometry and the study of non-Abelian anyons in atomic systems., Comment: 10 pages (6 + 4 supplementary material)

We use a gray molasses operating on the D$_1$ atomic transition to produce degenerate quantum gases of $^{6}$Li with a large number of atoms. This sub-Doppler cooling phase allows us to lower the initial temperature of 10$^9$ atoms from 500 to 40 $\mu$K in 2 ms. We observe that D$_1$ cooling remains effective into a high-intensity infrared dipole trap where two-state mixtures are evaporated to reach the degenerate regime. We produce molecular Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 5$\times$10$^{5}$ molecules and weakly-interacting degenerate Fermi gases of $7\times$10$^{5}$ atoms at $T/T_{F}<0.1$ with a typical experimental duty cycle of 11 seconds., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We present experimental evidence of the successful closed-loop optimization of the dynamics of cold atoms in an optical lattice. We optimize the loading of an ultracold atomic gas minimizing the excitations in an array of one-dimensional tubes (3D-1D crossover) and we perform an optimal crossing of the quantum phase-transition from a Superfluid to a Mott-Insulator in a three-dimensional lattice. In both cases we enhance the experiment performances with respect to those obtained via adiabatic dynamics, effectively speeding up the process by more than a factor three while improving the quality of the desired transformation.

Entanglement is a fundamental resource for quantum information processing, occurring naturally in many-body systems at low temperatures. The presence of entanglement and, in particular, its scaling with the size of system partitions underlies the complexity of quantum many-body states. The quantitative estimation of entanglement in many-body systems represents a major challenge as it requires either full state tomography, scaling exponentially in the system size, or the assumption of unverified system characteristics such as its Hamiltonian or temperature. Here we adopt recently developed approaches for the determination of rigorous lower entanglement bounds from readily accessible measurements and apply them in an experiment of ultracold interacting bosons in optical lattices of approximately $10^5$ sites. We then study the behaviour of spatial entanglement between the sites when crossing the superfluid-Mott insulator transition and when varying temperature. This constitutes the first rigorous experimental large-scale entanglement quantification in a scalable quantum simulator., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

Disorder, noise and interaction play a crucial role in the transport properties of real systems, but they are typically hard to control and study both theoretically and experimentally, especially in the quantum case. Here we explore a paradigmatic problem, the diffusion of a wavepacket, by employing ultra-cold atoms in a disordered lattice with controlled noise and tunable interaction. The presence of disorder leads to Anderson localization, while both interaction and noise tend to suppress localization and restore transport, although with completely different mechanisms. When only noise or interaction are present we observe a diffusion dynamics that can be explained by existing microscopic models. When noise and interaction are combined, we observe instead a complex anomalous diffusion. By combining experimental measurements with numerical simulations, we show that such anomalous behavior can be modeled with a generalized diffusion equation, in which the noise- and interaction-induced diffusions enter in an additive manner. Our study reveals also a more complex interplay between the two diffusion mechanisms in regimes of strong interaction or narrowband noise., Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures

We measure the absolute frequency of seven out of the nine allowed transitions between the 2$^3${\it S} and 2$^3${\it P} hyperfine manifolds in a metastable $^3$He beam by using an optical frequency comb synthesizer-assisted spectrometer. The relative uncertainty of our measurements ranges from $1\times 10^{-11}$ to $5\times 10^{-12}$, which is, to our knowledge, the most precise result for any optical $^3$He transition to date. The resulting $2^3${\it P}-2$^3${\it S} centroid frequency is $276\,702\,827\,204.8\,(2.4)$kHz. Comparing this value with the known result for the $^4$He centroid and performing {\em ab initio} QED calculations of the $^4$He-$^3$He isotope shift, we extract the difference of the squared nuclear charge radii $\delta r^2$ of $^3$He and $^4$He. Our result for $\delta r^2=1.074 (3)$ fm$^2$ disagrees by about $4\,\sigma$ with the recent determination [R. van Rooij {\em et al.}, Science {\bf 333}, 196 (2011)]., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables

We investigate sub-Doppler laser cooling of bosonic potassium isotopes, whose small hyperfine splitting has so far prevented cooling below the Doppler temperature. We find instead that the combination of a dark optical molasses scheme that naturally arises in this kind of systems and an adiabatic ramping of the laser parameters allows to reach sub-Doppler temperatures for small laser detunings. We demonstrate temperatures as low as 25(3)microK and 47(5)microK in high-density samples of the two isotopes 39K and 41K, respectively. Our findings will find application to other atomic systems., Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures

Using a species-selective dipole potential, we create initially localized impurities and investigate their interactions with a majority species of bosonic atoms in a one-dimensional configuration during expansion. We find an interaction-dependent amplitude reduction of the oscillation of the impurities' size with no measurable frequency shift, and study it as a function of the interaction strength. We discuss possible theoretical interpretations of the data. We compare, in particular, with a polaronic mass shift model derived following Feynman variational approach., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We study the transport dynamics of matter-waves in the presence of disorder and nonlinearity. An atomic Bose-Einstein condensate that is localized in a quasiperiodic lattice in the absence of atom-atom interaction shows instead a slow expansion with a subdiffusive behavior when a controlled repulsive interaction is added. The measured features of the subdiffusion are compared to numerical simulations and a heuristic model. The observations confirm the nature of subdiffusion as interaction-assisted hopping between localized states and highlight a role of the spatial correlation of the disorder., Comment: 8 pages, to be published on Physical Review Letters

One of the most important issues in disordered systems is the interplay of the disorder and repulsive interactions. Several recent experimental advances on this topic have been made with ultracold atoms, in particular the observation of Anderson localization, and the realization of the disordered Bose-Hubbard model. There are however still questions as to how to differentiate the complex insulating phases resulting from this interplay, and how to measure the size of the superfluid fragments that these phases entail. It has been suggested that the correlation function of such a system can give new insights, but so far little experimental investigation has been performed. Here, we show the first experimental analysis of the correlation function for a weakly interacting, bosonic system in a quasiperiodic lattice. We observe an increase in the correlation length as well as a change in shape of the correlation function in the delocalization crossover from Anderson glass to coherent, extended state. In between, the experiment indicates the formation of progressively larger coherent fragments, consistent with a fragmented BEC, or Bose glass., Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures

The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) is one of the three science instruments on ESA's far infrared and submillimetre observatory. It employs two Ge:Ga photoconductor arrays (stressed and unstressed) with 16x25 pixels, each, and two filled silicon bolometer arrays with 16x32 and 32x64 pixels, respectively, to perform integral-field spectroscopy and imaging photometry in the 60-210\mu\ m wavelength regime. In photometry mode, it simultaneously images two bands, 60-85\mu\ m or 85-125\mu\m and 125-210\mu\ m, over a field of view of ~1.75'x3.5', with close to Nyquist beam sampling in each band. In spectroscopy mode, it images a field of 47"x47", resolved into 5x5 pixels, with an instantaneous spectral coverage of ~1500km/s and a spectral resolution of ~175km/s. We summarise the design of the instrument, describe observing modes, calibration, and data analysis methods, and present our current assessment of the in-orbit performance of the instrument based on the Performance Verification tests. PACS is fully operational, and the achieved performance is close to or better than the pre-launch predictions.

We experimentally investigate the mix-dimensional scattering occurring when the collisional partners live in different dimensions. We employ a binary mixture of ultracold atoms and exploit a species-selective 1D optical lattice to confine only one atomic species in 2D. By applying an external magnetic field in proximity of a Feshbach resonance, we adjust the free-space scattering length to observe a series of resonances in mixed dimensions. By monitoring 3-body inelastic losses, we measure the magnetic field values corresponding to the mix-dimensional scattering resonances and find a good agreement with the theoretical predictions based on simple energy considerations., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to be published in PRL

Clarifying the interplay of interactions and disorder is fundamental to the understanding of many quantum systems, including superfluid helium in porous media, granular and thin-film superconductors, and light propagating in disordered media. One central aspect for bosonic systems is the competition between disorder, which tends to localize particles, and weak repulsive interactions, which instead have a delocalizing effect. Since the required degree of independent control of the disorder and of the interactions is not easily achievable in most available physical systems, a systematic experimental investigation of this competition has so far not been possible. Here we employ an ultracold atomic Bose-Einstein condensate with tunable repulsive interactions in a quasi-periodic lattice potential to study this interplay in detail. We characterize the entire delocalization crossover through the study of the average local shape of the wavefunction, the spatial correlations, and the phase coherence. Three different regimes are identified and compared with theoretical expectations: an exponentially localized Anderson glass, the formation of locally coherent fragments, as well as a coherent, extended state. Our results illuminate the role of weak repulsive interactions on disordered bosonic systems and show that the system and the techniques we employ are promising for further investigations of disordered systems with interactions, also in the strongly correlated regime., Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures

We investigate experimentally the entropy transfer between two distinguishable atomic quantum gases at ultralow temperatures. Exploiting a species-selective trapping potential, we are able to control the entropy of one target gas in presence of a second auxiliary gas. With this method, we drive the target gas into the degenerate regime in conditions of controlled temperature by transferring entropy to the auxiliary gas. We envision that our method could be useful both to achieve the low entropies required to realize new quantum phases and to measure the temperature of atoms in deep optical lattices. We verified the thermalization of the two species in a 1D lattice., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

In this work, we use inelastic scattering of light to study the response of inhomogeneous Mott-insulator gases to external excitations. The experimental setup and procedure to probe the atomic Mott states are presented in detail. We discuss the link between the energy absorbed by the gases and accessible experimental parameters as well as the linearity of the response to the scattering of light. We investigate the excitations of the system in multiple energy bands and a band-mapping technique allows us to identify band and momentum of the excited atoms. In addition the momentum distribution in the Mott states which is spread over the entire first Brillouin zone enables us to reconstruct the dispersion relation in the high energy bands using a single Bragg excitation with a fixed momentum transfer., Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures

In 1970 V. Efimov predicted a puzzling quantum-mechanical effect that is still of great interest today. He found that three particles subjected to a resonant pairwise interaction can join into an infinite number of loosely bound states even though each particle pair cannot bind. Interestingly, the properties of these aggregates, such as the peculiar geometric scaling of their energy spectrum, are universal, i.e. independent of the microscopic details of their components. Despite an extensive search in many different physical systems, including atoms, molecules and nuclei, the characteristic spectrum of Efimov trimer states still eludes observation. Here we report on the discovery of two bound trimer states of potassium atoms very close to the Efimov scenario, which we reveal by studying three-particle collisions in an ultracold gas. Our observation provides the first evidence of an Efimov spectrum and allows a direct test of its scaling behaviour, shedding new light onto the physics of few-body systems., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

The route toward a Bose-Einstein condensate of dipolar molecules requires the ability to efficiently associate dimers of different chemical species and transfer them to the stable rovibrational ground state. Here, we report on recent spectroscopic measurements of two weakly bound molecular levels and newly observed narrow d-wave Feshbach resonances. The data are used to improve the collisional model for the Bose-Bose mixture 41K87Rb, among the most promising candidates to create a molecular dipolar BEC., Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures

The Efimov effect represents a cornerstone in few-body physics. Building on the recent experimental observation with ultracold atoms, we report the first experimental signature of Efimov physics in a heteronuclear system. A mixture of $^{41}$K and $^{87}$Rb atoms was cooled to few hundred nanoKelvins and stored in an optical dipole trap. Exploiting a broad interspecies Feshbach resonance, the losses due to three-body collisions were studied as a function of the interspecies scattering length. We observe an enhancement of the three-body collisions for three distinct values of the interspecies scattering lengths, both positive and negative. We attribute the two features at negative scattering length to the existence of two kind of Efimov trimers, namely KKRb and KRbRb., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

We report on the experimental investigation of the response of a three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in the presence of a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice. By means of Bragg spectroscopy we probe the band structure of the excitation spectrum in the presence of the periodic potential. We selectively induce elementary excitations of the BEC choosing the transferred momentum and we observe different resonances in the energy transfer, corresponding to the transitions to different bands. The frequency, the width and the strength of these resonances are investigated as a function of the amplitude of the 1D optical lattice., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures