Dipolar Quantum Gases of Erbium Atoms
In our ERBIUM Lab, we daily produce Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and degenerate Fermi gases (dFG) of strongly magnetic Er atoms, which is the last born species in the family of Bose condensed atoms. Based on the richness of Er internal level structure, we were able to devise a very simple approach to reach quantum degeneracy with this complex species. In 2012, we produced the first Er BEC and shortly after the first dFG. Er degenerate quantum gases have an extremely prominent dipolar character because of their large atomic magnetic moment, opening the possibility to study fascinating effect arising from the anisotropic and long-range dipole-dipole interaction.
If you want to learn more about Er, you can find more info in the publications and/or contact us!
Featured Publications
A full list of the Er publications can be found here
Lab news
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We report on the observation of a large anisotropy in the rethermalization dynamics of an ultracold dipolar Fermi gas driven out of equilibrium. Our system consists of an ultracold sample of strongly magnetic Er167 fermions, spin polarized in the lowest Zeeman sublevel. In this system, elastic collisions arise purely from
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Now in Science! In the presence of isotropic interactions, the Fermi surface of an ultracold Fermi gas is spherical. Introducing anisotropic interactions can deform it. This effect is subtle and challenging to observe experimentally. We report the observation of such a Fermi surface deformation in a degenerate dipolar Fermi gas of
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We have studied the scattering behavior of ultracold Er atoms and observed an enormous number of Fano-Feshbach scattering resonances and demonstrate high correlation in the spectra, underlying chaotic scattering between the particles. This work, now published in NATURE, is a joint effort between our group, John L. Bohn from JILA (Boulder,
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We report on the creation of the first degenerate dipolar Fermi gas of erbium atoms. We force evaporative cooling in a fully spin-polarized sample down to temperatures as low as 0.2 times the Fermi temperature. The strong magnetic dipole-dipole interaction enables elastic collisions between identical fermions even in the zero-energy
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We have measured and analyzed the hyperfine structure of two lines, one at 583 nm and one at 401 nm, of the only stable fermionic isotope of atomic erbium as well as determined its isotope shift relative to the four most-abundant bosonic isotopes. Our work focuses on the J→J+1 laser
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We report on the experimental realization of a robust and efficient magneto-optical trap for erbium atoms, based on a narrow cooling transition at 583 nm. We observe up to N=2×10^8 atoms at a temperature of about T=15 μK. This simple scheme provides better starting conditions for direct loading of dipole
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