A quantum many-body spin system in an optical lattice clock.
Strongly interacting quantum many-body systems arise in many areas of physics, but their complexity generally precludes exact solutions to their dynamics. We explored a strongly interacting two-level system formed by the clock states in (87)Sr as a laboratory for the study of quantum many-body effects. Our collective spin measurements reveal signatures of the development of many-body correlations during the dynamical evolution. We derived a many-body Hamiltonian that describes the experimental observation of atomic spin coherence decay, density-dependent frequency shifts, severely distorted lineshapes, and correlated spin noise. These investigations open the door to further explorations of quantum many-body effects and entanglement through use of highly coherent and precisely controlled optical lattice clocks.
JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. mjmartin@caltech.edu
M J
MJ
Martin
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M
Bishof
M D
MD
Swallows
X
X
Zhang
C
C
Benko
J
J
von-Stecher
A V
AV
Gorshkov
A M
AM
Rey
Jun
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Ye