We report the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of the most magnetic element, dysprosium. The Dy BEC is the first for an open f -shell lanthanide (rare-earth) element and is produced via forced evaporation in a crossed optical dipole trap loaded by an unusual, blue-detuned and spinpolarized narrow-line magneto-optical trap. Nearly pure condensates of 1.5×10 4 164 Dy atoms form below T = 30 nK. We observe that stable BEC formation depends on the relative angle of a small polarizing magnetic field to the axis of the oblate trap, a property of trapped condensates only expected in the strongly dipolar regime. This regime was heretofore only attainable in Cr BECs via a Feshbach resonance accessed at high magnetic field.
The interplay between crystallinity and superfluidity is of great fundamental and technological interest in condensed matter settings. In particular, electronic quantum liquid crystallinity arises in the non-Fermi liquid, pseudogap regime neighboring a cuprate's unconventional superconducting phase 1 . While the techniques of ultracold atomic physics and quantum optics have enabled explorations of the strongly correlated, many-body physics inherent in, e.g., the Hubbard model 2 , lacking has been the ability to create a quantum degenerate Fermi gas with interparticle interactions-such as the strong dipole-dipole interaction 3 -capable of inducing analogs to electronic quantum liquid crystals. We report the first quantum degenerate dipolar Fermi gas, the realization of which opens a new frontier for exploring strongly correlated physics and, in particular, the quantum melting of smectics in the pristine environment provided by the ultracold atomic physics setting 4 . A quantum degenerate Fermi gas of the most magnetic atom 161 Dy is produced by laser cooling to 10 µK before sympathetically cooling with ultracold, bosonic 162 Dy. The temperature of the spin-polarized 161 Dy is a factor T /T F = 0.2 below the Fermi temperature T F = 300 nK. The co-trapped 162 Dy concomitantly cools to approximately T c for Bose-Einstein condensation, thus realizing a novel, nearly quantum degenerate dipolar Bose-Fermi gas mixture.Quantum soft phases are states of quantum matter intermediate between canonical states of order and disorder, and may be considered the counterparts of liquid crystalline and glassy states in classical (soft) condensed matter physics. Such phases tend to arise under competition between short and long-range interactions and often result in the non-Fermi liquid, strongly correlated behavior manifest in some of the most interesting electronic materials of late: high-T c cuprate superconductors, strontium ruthenates, 2D electron gases, and iron-based superconductors 5 . Recent theory suggests the long-range, anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction (DDI) among atoms in a degenerate Fermi gas, confined in an harmonic trap or optical lattice, may also induce transitions to states beyond the now-familiar insulating, metallic, and superfluid. Namely, phases that break rotational, translational, or point group symmetries may emerge in a manner akin to those found in classical liquid crystals, e.g., the nematic and smectic 1 . Degenerate gases of highly magnetic fermionic atoms, such as 161 Dy, may shed light on QLC physics without unwanted solid state material complexity, disorder, and dynamical lattice distortions. Uniaxial (meta-nematic) 6 and biaxial nematic 7 distortions of the Fermi surface of a harmonically trapped gas in the presence of a polarizing field may be observable as well as meta-nematic and smectic phases in 2D anisotropic optical lattices [8][9][10] . An exciting prospect lies in the possibility of achieving spontaneous magnetization in dipolar systems coupled with nematic order 11,12 . Additionally,...
We describe the creation of a long-lived spin-orbit-coupled gas of quantum degenerate atoms using the most magnetic fermionic element, dysprosium. Spin-orbit-coupling arises from a synthetic gauge field created by the adiabatic following of degenerate dressed states comprised of optically coupled components of an atomic spin. Because of dysprosium's large electronic orbital angular momentum and large magnetic moment, the lifetime of the gas is limited not by spontaneous emission from the light-matter coupling, as for gases of alkali-metal atoms, but by dipolar relaxation of the spin. This relaxation is suppressed at large magnetic fields due to Fermi statistics. We observe lifetimes up to 400 ms, which exceeds that of spin-orbit-coupled fermionic alkali atoms by a factor of 10-100, and is close to the value obtained from a theoretical model. Elastic dipolar interactions are also observed to influence the Rabi evolution of the spin, revealing an interacting fermionic system. The long lifetime of this weakly interacting spin-orbit-coupled degenerate Fermi gas will facilitate the study of quantum many-body phenomena manifest at longer timescales, with exciting implications for the exploration of exotic topological quantum liquids. arXiv:1605.03211v2 [cond-mat.quant-gas]
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