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Poster Session

Poster Session III

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm, Thursday June 19 Session S00 Oregon Convention Center:, Exhibit Hall E
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Tunable spin-motion dynamics with polar molecules

Poster 95
Presenter: Phillip Martin (JILA)
Authors: Junyu Lin (JILA), Calder Miller (CU Boulder), Annette Carroll (University of Colorado, Boulder), Tim de Jongh (JILA), Jun Ye (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Ultracold molecules in optical lattices offer a versatile platform for investigating quantum many-body physics due to their strong, long-range, and tunable dipolar interactions. We will present recent results from realizing generalized t-J models and a range of XXZ and XYZ spin models using ultracold KRb molecules [1, 2, 3]. Confining the molecules to two dimensions provides further control of the spatial anisotropy of their dipolar interactions, and a low-entropy sample allows exploration of qualitatively new physics in these spin-motion systems. We discuss our progress towards creating such a deeply degenerate 2D Fermi gas of ground state polar molecules, building on our previous work of selecting [4] and evaporating [5] molecules in individual layers of 2D optical traps. We compress an atomic mixture of K and Rb to a quasi-2D geometry using an optical lattice of variable spacing, and transfer the mixture to a fixed-spacing lattice. We then create ground state molecules and leverage the greater vertical confinement provided by the fixed-spacing lattice to perform dipolar evaporation [5]. Reaching deep degeneracy for these 2D samples will allow us to explore the rich quantum phases and dynamics of various spin-motion models.

[1] Tunable itinerant spin dynamics with polar molecules, J. Li et al., Nature 614, p. 70–74 (2023)

[2] Observation of Generalized t-J Spin Dynamics with Tunable Dipolar Interactions, A. N. Carroll et al., arXiv:2404.18916 (2024)

[3] Two-axis twisting using Floquet-engineered XYZ spin models with polar molecules, C. Miller et al., Nature 633, p. 332–337 (2024)

[4] Reactions between layer-resolved molecules mediated by dipolar spin exchange, W. Tobias et al., Science 375, p. 1299-1303 (2022).

[5] Dipolar evaporation of reactive molecules to below the Fermi temperature, G. Valtolina et al., Nature 588, p. 239–243 (2020)

Funding acknowledgement

This work was supported by the US DOE, Office of Science, NQIS Research Centers, Quantum Systems Accelerator. Support is also acknowledged from NSF OMA-2016244, NSF PHY-2317149, AFOSR MURI, ARO MURI and NIST. C.M. acknowledges support from the DOD through the NDSEG Fellowship. A.N.C. acknowledges support from the NSF GRFP under grant number DGE 2040434.

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