title: Time-resolved observation of coherent multi-body interactions in quantum phase revivals.
abstract: Interactions lie at the heart of correlated many-body quantum phases. Typically, the interactions between microscopic particles are described as two-body interactions. However, it has been shown that higher-order multi-body interactions could give rise to novel quantum phases with intriguing properties. So far, multi-body interactions have been observed as inelastic loss resonances in three- and four-body recombinations of atom-atom and atom-molecule collisions. Here we demonstrate the presence of effective multi-body interactions in a system of ultracold bosonic atoms in a three-dimensional optical lattice, emerging through virtual transitions of particles from the lowest energy band to higher energy bands. We observe such interactions up to the six-body case in time-resolved traces of quantum phase revivals, using an atom interferometric technique that allows us to precisely measure the absolute energies of atom number states at a lattice site. In addition, we show that the spectral content of these time traces can reveal the atom number statistics at a lattice site, similar to foundational experiments in cavity quantum electrodynamics that yield the statistics of a cavity photon field. Our precision measurement of multi-body interaction energies provides crucial input for the comparison of optical-lattice quantum simulators with many-body quantum theory.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, 55099 Mainz, Germany. sebastian.will@lmu.de
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Will
authors.forename: Thorsten
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Best
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hackermüller
authors.forename: Dirk-Sören
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Lühmann
authors.forename: Immanuel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bloch
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 1986 Jul 7;57(1):13-16
references.pmid: 10033345
references.citation: Science. 2006 Aug 4;313(5787):649-52
references.pmid: 16888134
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 1996 Mar 11;76(11):1800-1803
references.pmid: 10060524
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2008 May 30;100(21):210403
references.pmid: 18518588
references.citation: Nature. 2002 Sep 5;419(6902):51-4
references.pmid: 12214228
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2008 Aug 1;101(5):050402
references.pmid: 18764376
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2008 Aug 29;101(9):090404
references.pmid: 18851591
references.citation: Nature. 2008 Oct 30;455(7217):1216-9
references.pmid: 18830245
references.citation: Nature. 2006 Mar 16;440(7082):315-8
references.pmid: 16541068
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 1996 Mar 11;76(11):1796-1799
references.pmid: 10060523
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2005 Jul 15;95(3):030405
references.pmid: 16090725
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 1996 Sep 9;77(11):2158-2161
references.pmid: 10061873
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Sep 9;89(11):110401
references.pmid: 12225133
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Mar 10;96(9):090401
references.pmid: 16606244
references.citation: Nature. 2001 Jan 4;409(6816):63-6
references.pmid: 11343111
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Mar 13;102(10):100401
references.pmid: 19392092
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2005 Jul 29;95(5):050404
references.pmid: 16090855
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2007 May 18;98(20):200405
references.pmid: 17677678