Wave Packet Dynamics in Synthetic Non-Abelian Gauge Fields.

It is generally admitted that in quantum mechanics, the electromagnetic potentials have physical interpretations otherwise absent in classical physics as illustrated by the Aharonov-Bohm effect. In 1984, Berry interpreted this effect as a geometrical phase factor. The same year, Wilczek and Zee generalized the concept of Berry phases to degenerate levels and showed that a non-Abelian gauge field arises in these systems. In sharp contrast with the Abelian case, spatially uniform non-Abelian gauge fields can induce particle noninertial motion. We explore this intriguing phenomenon with a degenerated Fermionic atomic gas subject to a two-dimensional synthetic SU(2) non-Abelian gauge field. We reveal the spin Hall nature of the noninertial dynamic as well as its anisotropy in amplitude and frequency due to the spin texture of the system. We finally draw the similarities and differences of the observed wave packet dynamic and the celebrated Zitterbewegung effect of the relativistic Dirac equation.

In Situ Thermometry of Fermionic Cold-Atom Quantum Wires.

We study ensembles of fermionic cold-atom quantum wires with tunable transverse mode population and single-wire resolution. From in situ density profiles, we determine the temperature of the atomic wires in the weakly interacting limit and reconstruct the underlying potential landscape. By varying atom number and temperature, we control the occupation of the transverse modes and study the 1D-3D crossover. In the 1D limit, we observe an increase of the reduced temperature T/T_{F} at nearly constant entropy per particle S/Nk_{B}. The ability to probe individual atomic wires in situ paves the way to quantitatively study equilibrium and transport properties of strongly interacting 1D Fermi gases.

Conductivity Spectrum of Ultracold Atoms in an Optical Lattice.

We measure the conductivity of neutral fermions in a cubic optical lattice. Using in situ fluorescence microscopy, we observe the alternating current resultant from a single-frequency uniform force applied by displacement of a weak harmonic trapping potential. In the linear response regime, a neutral-particle analog of Ohm's law gives the conductivity as the ratio of total current to force. For various lattice depths, temperatures, interaction strengths, and fillings, we measure both real and imaginary conductivity, up to a frequency sufficient to capture the transport dynamics within the lowest band. The spectral width of the real conductivity reveals the current dissipation rate in the lattice, and the integrated spectral weight is related to thermodynamic properties of the system through a sum rule. The global conductivity decreases with increased band-averaged effective mass, which at high temperatures approaches a T-linear regime. Relaxation of current is observed to require a finite lattice depth, which breaks Galilean invariance and enables damping through collisions between fermions.

Popsicle-Stick Cobra Wave.

The cobra wave is a popular physical phenomenon arising from the explosion of a metastable grillage made of popsicle sticks. The sticks are expelled from the mesh by releasing the elastic energy stored during the weaving of the structure. Here we analyze both experimentally and theoretically the propagation of the wave front depending on the properties of the sticks and the pattern of the mesh. We show that its velocity and its shape are directly related to the recoil imparted to the structure by the expelled sticks. Finally, we show that the cobra wave can only exist for a narrow range of parameters constrained by gravity and rupture of the sticks.

2.4-watts second-harmonic generation in ppZnO:LN ridge waveguide for lithium laser cooling.

We present a simple all-solid-state laser source emitting 2.4 W of single-frequency light at 671 nm for laser cooling of lithium atoms. It is based on a diode-pumped solid-state laser, which is frequency doubled in a ppZnO:LN ridge waveguide with an internal doubling efficiency of 54%. We develop a simple theory for the thermal effects we observed at elevated fundamental powers, and compare the setup to a more efficient but more complex one with an external resonant frequency doubling cavity providing 5.2 W at 671 nm.

Connecting Few-Body Inelastic Decay to Quantum Correlations in a Many-Body System: A Weakly Coupled Impurity in a Resonant Fermi Gas.

We study three-body recombination in an ultracold Bose-Fermi mixture. We first show theoretically that, for weak interspecies coupling, the loss rate is proportional to Tan's contact. Second, using a ^{7}Li/^{6}Li mixture we probe the recombination rate in both the thermal and dual superfluid regimes. We find excellent agreement with our model in the BEC-BCS crossover. At unitarity where the fermion-fermion scattering length diverges, we show that the loss rate is proportional to n_{f}^{4/3}, where n_{f} is the fermionic density. This unusual exponent signals nontrivial two-body correlations in the system. Our results demonstrate that few-body losses can be used as a quantitative probe of quantum correlations in many-body ensembles.

Critical Velocity and Dissipation of an Ultracold Bose-Fermi Counterflow.

We study the dynamics of counterflowing bosonic and fermionic lithium atoms. First, by tuning the interaction strength we measure the critical velocity v(c) of the system in the BEC-BCS crossover in the low temperature regime and we compare it to the recent prediction of Castin et al., C. R. Phys. 16, 241 (2015). Second, raising the temperature of the mixture slightly above the superfluid transitions reveals an unexpected phase locking of the oscillations of the clouds induced by dissipation.

Momentum Distribution of a Dilute Unitary Bose Gas with Three-Body Losses.

Using a combination of Boltzmann's equation and virial expansion, we study the effect of three-body losses and interactions on the momentum distribution of a homogeneous unitary Bose gas in the dilute limit where quantum correlations are negligible. The comparison of our results to the recent measurement made at JILA on a unitary gas of ^{85}Rb allows us to determine an experimental fugacity z=0.5(1).

p-Wave polaron.

We consider a single impurity immersed in a Fermi sea close to an interspecies p-wave Feshbach resonance. We calculate its dispersion and spectral response to a radio frequency pulse. In a magnetic field, dipolar interactions split the resonance and two novel features with respect to the s-wave case appear: a third polaron branch in the excitation spectrum, in addition to the usual attractive and repulsive ones; and an anisotropic dispersion of the impurity characterized by different effective masses perpendicular and parallel to the magnetic field. The anisotropy can be tuned as a function of the field strength and the two effective masses may have opposite signs, or become smaller than the bare mass.

Dynamics and thermodynamics of the low-temperature strongly interacting Bose gas.

We measure the zero-temperature equation of state of a homogeneous Bose gas of (7)Li atoms by analyzing the in situ density distributions of trapped samples. For increasing repulsive interactions our data show a clear departure from mean-field theory and provide a quantitative test of the many-body corrections first predicted in 1957 by Lee, Huang, and Yang [Phys. Rev. 106, 1135 (1957).]. We further probe the dynamic response of the Bose gas to a varying interaction strength and compare it to simple theoretical models. We deduce a lower bound for the value of the universal constant ξ > 0.44(8) that would characterize the universal Bose gas at the unitary limit.

Wave drag on floating bodies.

We measure the deceleration of liquid nitrogen drops floating at the surface of a liquid bath. On water, the friction force is found to be about 10 to 100 times larger than on a solid substrate, which is shown to arise from wave resistance. We investigate the influence of the bath viscosity and show that the dissipation decreases as the viscosity is increased, owing to wave damping. The measured resistance is well predicted by a model imposing a vertical force (i.e., the drop weight) on a finite area, as long as the wake can be considered stationary.

Normal phase of an imbalanced Fermi gas.

Recent experiments on imbalanced Fermi gases have raised interest in the physics of an impurity immersed in a Fermi sea, the so-called Fermi polaron. In this Letter, a simple theory is devised to describe dilute Fermi-polaron ensembles corresponding to the normal phase of an imbalanced Fermi gas. An exact formula is obtained for the dominant interaction between polarons, expressed solely in terms of a single-polaron parameter. The physics of this interaction is identified as a signature of the Pauli exclusion principle.