Physics
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Item Ultracold Gases in a Two-Frequency Breathing Lattice(2024) Dewan, Aftaab; Rolston, Steven L; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Driven systems have been of particular interest in the field of ultracold atomic gases. Theprecise control and relative purity allows for construction of many novel Hamiltonians. One such system is the ‘breathing’ lattice, where both the frequency and amplitude is modulated in time, much like an accordion. We present the results of a phenomenological investigation of a proposed experiment, one where we apply a two-frequency breathing lattice to an atomic system. The results are surprising, as they indicate the possibility of a phase-dependent transition between nearest-neighbour and beyond nearest-neighbour interactions.Item Floquet Heating and Relaxation of Interacting Bose Einstein Condensates(2022) Maslek, James; Porto, James V; Rolston, Steve; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Floquet’s theorem says that any unitary, periodically driven system can be described by an effective time-independent Hamiltonian, where the effective Hamiltonian can have completely different properties than the static, undriven system. Floquet engineering makes use of this idea to simulate new Hamiltonians that would otherwise not be possible in the undriven case. For interacting systems, this approach can be used to realize interesting correlated many-body states, but drive-induced heating must be understood and mitigated. Cold atoms in optical lattices provide a controllable, well-isolated system in which these ideas can and have been realized. I describe research into two areas of Floquet engineering for interacting Bose-Einstein condensates in periodically driven optical lattices. The first half of this thesis focuses on the study of heating mechanisms for condensates in periodically driven lattices. In the weakly interacting limit, one might expect that heating could be described with a Fermi Golden Rule approach. Parametric driving of fluctuations in the condensate, however, can lead to runaway heating that cannot be described perturbatively. We experimentally study heating in shaken 2D square lattices and demonstrate heating consistent with the theoretical predictions of parametric instabilities. The second half of this thesis describes experiments that realize Floquet-induced effective staggered magnetic fields, and the relaxation dynamics of interacting particles subject to these fields. Interestingly, we observe pre-thermal relaxation dynamics, where an initially heated cloud suddenly subject to the effective Hamiltonian condenses into a state governed by the drive-induced effective Hamilton on a timescale faster than heating.Item Bose Einstein Condensates for Analogue Cosmology Experiments(2021) Gutierrez Galan, Monica; Campbell, Gretchen K; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis presents the construction and characterization of an experimental apparatus to produce sodium Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in arbitrary potentials. Particular attention is devoted to the study of toroidal BECs as platforms for analogue cosmology models. We also report the first results from this apparatus in which we studied the red-shifting and attenuation of azimuthal phonons in expanding toroidal BECs as well as blue-shifting and amplification of azimuthal phonons in contracting toroidal BECs. The amplification and attenuation of the azimuthal phonons is the result of a non-dissipative friction term that arises from the changing geometry of the background BEC, this non-dissipative friction is analogous to the Hubble friction present in cosmology models.Item Ultracold Mixtures of Rubidium and Ytterbium for Open Quantum System Engineering(2014) Herold, Creston David; Porto, James V; Rolston, Steven L; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Exquisite experimental control of quantum systems has led to sharp growth of basic quantum research in recent years. Controlling dissipation has been crucial in producing ultracold, trapped atomic samples. Recent theoretical work has suggested dissipation can be a useful tool for quantum state preparation. Controlling not only how a system interacts with a reservoir, but the ability to engineer the reservoir itself would be a powerful platform for open quantum system research. Toward this end, we have constructed an apparatus to study ultracold mixtures of rubidium (Rb) and ytterbium (Yb). We have developed a Rb-blind optical lattice at 423.018(7) nm, which will enable us to immerse a lattice of Yb atoms (the system) into a Rb BEC (superfluid reservoir). We have produced Bose-Einstein condensates of 170-Yb and 174-Yb, two of the five bosonic isotopes of Yb, which also has two fermionic isotopes. Flexible optical trapping of Rb and Yb was achieved with a two-color dipole trap of 532 and 1064 nm, and we observed thermalization in ultracold mixtures of Rb and Yb. Using the Rb-blind optical lattice, we measured very small light shifts of 87-Rb BECs near the light shift zero-wavelengths adjacent the 6p electronic states, through a coherent series of lattice pulses. The positions of the zero-wavelengths are sensitive to the electric dipole matrix elements between the 5s and 6p states, and we made the first experimental measurement of their strength. By measuring a light shift, we were not sensitive to excited state branching ratios, and we achieved a precision better than 0.3%.Item Optical Lattices and Quantum Degenerate 87Rb in Reduced Dimensions(2006-12-11) Huckans, John Howard; Phillips, William D.; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is about the physics of dilute gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) confined to lower dimensions by optical lattices. The central theme of the effects of reduced dimensionality is explored within various one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) systems. We create a 2D BEC by adiabatically increasing the confinement of a trapping potential in one direction to the point where motion in that direction is frozen out. Doing this in two directions, we create a 1D BEC. Two experiments examine the ground state properties of a 1D and 2D system. In the 1D system (Chap. 9), a reduction in three-body recombination signals an increase in correlation resulting in a partial "fermionization" of the Bose gas. In the 2D system (Chap. 8), we measure temperature-dependent condensate phase fluctuations in the vicinity of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. Other experiments investigate dynamic properties of reduced dimension systems. Strongly inhibited transport of a 1D gas in a lattice is observed in one experiment (Chap. 9). Another 2D experiment measures suppressed collisional decay rates due to the reduced dimensionality (Chap. 9). A final experiment (Chap. 7) examines quantum/classical correspondence in the effectively 1D dynamics of a 3D BEC. The dynamics is effectively 1D in the sense that the experiment is over before motion in the radial directions (which are not frozen out) can occur. This dissertation also describes the design and implementation of a novel 1D "accordion lattice" (Chaps. 5-6) which greatly facilitated the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless experiment, the quantum/classical correspondence experiment, and a "superlattice" experiment conducted to assist in the calibration of the accordion lattice.