Hannover 2016 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 68: Quantum Gases: Fermions III
Q 68.2: Talk
Friday, March 4, 2016, 14:45–15:00, e001
Site-resolved imaging of a fermionic Mott insulator — •Daniel Greif1, Maxwell F. Parsons1, Anton Mazurenko1, Christie S. Chiu1, Sebastian Blatt1,2, Florian Huber1, Geoffrey Ji1, and Markus Greiner1 — 1Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA — 2Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, 85748 Garching, Germany
Probing quantum many-body systems on a microscopic level with single-site resolution offers unique insight with unprecedented control and level of detail. We report site-resolved imaging of two-component fermionic Mott insulators, metals, and band insulators with ultracold Li-6 atoms in a square lattice. We observe large, defect-free 2D Mott insulators for strong repulsive interactions, which are characterized by a constant single-site occupation and strongly reduced variance. For intermediate interactions we observe a coexistence of phases. From comparison to theory we find trap-averaged entropies per particle of 1.0 kB and local entropies as low as 0.5 kB. This experiment is a vital step towards probing quantum-mechanical models in regimes inaccessible by modern theoretical methods.