Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 36: Quantum gases: Effects of interactions

Q 36.2: Talk

Thursday, March 20, 2014, 11:00–11:15, UDL HS2002

Quantum chaos in ultracold collisions of erbium — •Albert Frisch, Michael Mark, Kiyotaka Aikawa, Simon Baier, and Francesca Ferlaino — Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstraße 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

In the 1950’s the Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner designed a revolutionary statistical theory, based on random matrices, to describe complex systems. Originally created for nuclear matter, Random Matrix Theory (RMT) has today a vast domain of applications from solid-state disordered systems and quantum chromodynamics to number theory and wireless communication [1]. Remarkably, the Bohigas-Giannoni-Schmit (BGS) conjecture ties RMT to classical and quantum chaos [2]. Inspired by [3], we show that even ultracold quantum gases, whose high tractability has been hymned for decades, can escape a deterministic logic and show chaotic behavior in the sense of the BGS conjecture. In particular, we perform high-resolution trap-loss spectroscopy of Fano-Feshbach resonances with two bosonic and one fermionic isotopes of erbium. We observe an unprecedented high density of resonances which allows a statistical analysis of the position of resonances according to the toolset provided by RMT. From a bottom-up approach unique to ultracold atoms, we elucidate the native source of chaotic scattering in the anisotropy of the interactions.

[1] H. A. Weidenmüller et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 539 (2009)

[2] O. Bohigas et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 1 (1984)

[3] M. Mayle et al., Phys. Rev. A 87, 012709 (2013)