Correlations of Stimulated Matterwave Emissions and Interaction-Induced Gauge Field in Driven Bose-Einstein Condensates

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This project will explore a new phenomena called "Bose fireworks" that was recently discovered at the University of Chicago. Bose fireworks occur when dense samples of ultracold gas known as Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) emit jets of matterwaves in different directions, making formations reminiscent of fireworks. Such behavior is stimulated by subjecting the BEC to periodic modulations in potential energy. This project will investigate in detail how Bose fireworks occur, and how correlations between the strength and direction of the jets develop. This can serve as a model for universal behavior of a quantum many-body system driven far from thermal equilibrium, and may pioneer a new type of quantum simulation. This is important because it can address fundamental issues in nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, and even cosmology. Graduate students engaged in this project will be trained in cutting edge atomic physics research techniques. This team will also disseminate research excitement to broader audiences, including underrepresented minority (URM) K-12 students and undergraduate students on the south side of Chicago via an outreach activity that provides week-long science activities in summer. Another educational activity as part of this project will be the establishment of a new undergraduate-led laboratory for innovative experimentation, called "Undergraduate Research Center on Levitation Science". The laboratory will offer unique opportunities for many talented undergraduate students to innovate and be involved in the development of new ideas that can potentially impact fundamental science and interdisciplinary applications.This project will study novel correlations of matterwave emissions recently observed in driven Bose-Einstein condensates. By periodically modulating the atomic scattering length, a firework-like emission of matterwave jets is found to reveal rich, intricate correlations between the populations in different momentum modes. The emission resembles the matterwave version of superradiance in a dense sample, and is theoretically predicted to be a universal signature for driven quantum many-body system far from thermal equilibrium. This team will investigate the stimulated emission of matterwaves in both Bose condensates and Bose-Fermi mixtures. The fireworks can be a powerful tool to probe weak quantum fluctuations and correlations. This team will also develop a new scheme to realize an interaction-dependent synthetic gauge field by combining the modulation of scattering length and the shaking of a 2D optical lattice. This will test a prediction that the scattering length modulation will hybridize the Floquet bands in the two lattice directions and will lead to an interaction-dependent D4 and D2 symmetry breaking that would not occur for non-interacting bosons. The interaction-driven gauge field is an essential step to couple matter and gauge fields and to explore quantum simulation of dynamical gauge fields and anyonic excitations based on atomic quantum gases.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.