Dissipation in optical lattices: Zeno suppression of losses and anomalous decay of coherence

Venue: Room Physics Seminar room (second floor)

At: 10.30

Manel Bosch Aguilera - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Collège de France, Paris

Abstract:

Ytterbium atoms feature a rich electronic structure, with an optical clock transition free of spontaneous emission, and a narrow intercombination transition, making them very appealing for metrological and quantum simulation proposals.
By performing spectroscopy on the clock line in  a deep optical lattice, we are able to coherently drive this optical transition for long times. In the first part of this talk, I will show a set of experiments in which we have used this coherent control to prepare a small open quantum system. Here, dissipation arises in the form of two-body losses of atoms
in the metastable state. By enabling the coupling adiabatically, we observe a strong suppression of these losses, which is interpreted as a signature of the quantum Zeno effect.
Finally, I elaborate an investigation on a strongly-interacting open system. Dissipation is artificially induced in the form of spontaneous emission by using the intercombination transition.  Here, I study in which manner spontaneous emission destroys the spatial coherence of a superfluid in an optical lattice. These experiments reveal that the presence of strong interactions partially protects a residual amount of coherence and makes decoherence develop in a non-trivial manner, unveiling the emergence of a subdiffusive relaxation channel.