We explore the transport properties of an interacting Fermi gas in a three-dimensional optical lattice. The center of mass dynamics of the atoms after a sudden displacement of the trap minimum is monitored for different interaction strengths and lattice fillings. With increasingly strong attractive interactions the weakly damped oscillation, observed for the noninteracting case, turns into a slow relaxational drift. Tuning the interaction strength during the evolution allows us to dynamically control the transport behavior. Strong attraction between the atoms leads to the formation of local pairs with a reduced tunneling rate. The interpretation in terms of pair formation is supported by a measurement of the number of doubly occupied lattice sites. This quantity also allows us to determine the temperature of the noninteracting gas in the lattice to be as low as $(27\pm 2)\%$ of the Fermi temperature.

We perform a reconstruction of the polarization sector of the density matrix of an intense polarization squeezed beam starting from a complete set of Stokes measurements. By using an appropriate quasidistribution, we map this onto the Poincaré space, providing a full quantum mechanical characterization of the measured polarization state.

If $n$ qubits were distributed between 2 parties, which quantum pure states and distributions of qubits would allow all-versus-nothing (or Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-like) proofs of Bell’s theorem using only single-qubit measurements? We show a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of these proofs for any number of qubits, and provide all distinct proofs up to $n=7$ qubits. Remarkably, there is only one distribution of a state of $n=4$ qubits, and six distributions, each for a different state of $n=6$ qubits, which allow these proofs.

We report on measurements of dynamical suppression of interwell tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a strongly driven optical lattice. The strong driving is a sinusoidal shaking of the lattice corresponding to a time-varying linear potential, and the tunneling is measured by letting the BEC freely expand in the lattice. The measured tunneling rate is reduced and, for certain values of the shaking parameter, completely suppressed. Our results are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. Furthermore, we have verified that, in general, the strong shaking does not destroy the phase coherence of the BEC, opening up the possibility of realizing quantum phase transitions by using the shaking strength as the control parameter.

We perform first-principles quantum simulations of dissociation of trapped, spatially inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates of molecular dimers. Specifically, we study spatial pair correlations of atoms produced in dissociation after time of flight. We find that the observable correlations may significantly degrade in systems with spatial inhomogeneity compared to the predictions of idealized uniform models. We show how binning of the signal can enhance the detectable correlations and lead to the violation of the classical Cauchy-Schwartz inequality and relative number squeezing.

We derive a new class of correlation Bell-type inequalities. The inequalities are valid for any number of outcomes of two observables per each of $n$ parties, including continuous and unbounded observables. We show that there are no first-moment correlation Bell inequalities for that scenario, but such inequalities can be found if one considers at least second moments. The derivation stems from a simple variance inequality by setting local commutators to zero. We show that above a constant detector efficiency threshold, the continuous-variable Bell violation can survive even in the macroscopic limit of large $n$. This method can be used to derive other well-known Bell inequalities, shedding new light on the importance of noncommutativity for violations of local realism.

We analyze the class of nonlocal realistic theories that was originally considered by Leggett [Found. Phys. 33, 1469 (2003)] and tested by us in a recent experiment [Nature (London) 446, 871 (2007)]. We derive an incompatibility theorem that works for finite numbers of polarizer settings and that does not require the previously assumed rotational symmetry of the two-particle correlation functions. The experimentally measured case involves seven different measurement settings. Using polarization-entangled photon pairs, we exclude this broader class of nonlocal realistic models by experimentally violating a new Leggett-type inequality by 80 standard deviations.

Bell’s theorem guarantees that no model based on local variables can reproduce quantum correlations. Also, some models based on nonlocal variables, if subject to apparently “reasonable” constraints, may fail to reproduce quantum physics. In this Letter, we introduce a family of inequalities, which use a finite number of measurement settings, and which therefore allow testing Leggett’s nonlocal model versus quantum physics. Our experimental data falsify Leggett’s model and are in agreement with quantum predictions.

The concept of phase and dwell times used in tunneling is extended to quantum collisions to derive a relation between the phase and dwell time delays in scattering. This relation can be used to remove the near threshold $s$-wave singularities in the Wigner-Eisenbud delay times and amounts to an extension of the concept of quantum reflection to strong interactions. Dwell time delay emerges as the quantity which gives the correct behavior of the density of states of a metastable state at all energies. This fact is demonstrated by investigating some recently found metastable states of mesic nuclei.

We report the prediction of quasibound states (resonant states with very long lifetimes) that occur in the eigenvalue continuum of propagating states for certain systems in which the continuum is formed by two overlapping energy bands. We illustrate this effect using a quantum wire system with two channels and an attached adatom. When the energy bands of the two channels overlap, a would-be bound state that lays just below the upper energy band is slightly destabilized by the lower energy band and thereby becomes a resonant state with a very long lifetime (a second such state lays above the lower energy band). Unlike the bound states in continuum predicted by von Neumann and Wigner, these states occur for a wide region of parameter space.

We find a general formula for the distribution of time-averaged observables for systems modeled according to the subdiffusive continuous time random walk. For Gaussian random walks coupled to a thermal bath we recover ergodicity and Boltzmann’s statistics, while for the anomalous subdiffusive case a weakly nonergodic statistical mechanical framework is constructed, which is based on Lévy’s generalized central limit theorem. As an example we calculate the distribution of $\overline{X}$, the time average of the position of the particle, for unbiased and uniformly biased particles, and show that $\overline{X}$ exhibits large fluctuations compared with the ensemble average $⟨X⟩$.

The flow and diffusion driven separation of initially adjacent liquid molecules is known as dispersion. The primary physical quantity describing this process, the nonlocal dispersion tensor, provides insight regarding both the spatial and temporal correlations of molecular velocity fluctuations in complex flows. We here propose and demonstrate a nuclear magnetic resonance method for the measurement of this tensor, validating its implementation for the case of cylindrical Couette flow, and demonstrating its application to the study of fluid dispersion in a random bead pack.

The Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect is a purely quantum mechanical effect. The original (classified as type-I) AB-phase shift exists in experimental conditions where the electromagnetic fields and forces are zero. It is the absence of forces that makes the AB effect entirely quantum mechanical. Although the AB-phase shift has been demonstrated unambiguously, the absence of forces in type-I AB effects has never been shown. Here, we report the observation of the absence of time delays associated with forces of the magnitude needed to explain the AB-phase shift for a macroscopic system.

We study theoretically a dilute gas of identical fermions interacting via a $p$-wave resonance. We show that, depending on the microscopic physics, there are two distinct regimes of $p$-wave resonant superfluids, which we term “weak” and “strong.” Although expected naively to form a paired superfluid, a strongly resonant $p$-wave superfluid is in fact unstable toward the formation of a gas of fermionic trimers. We examine this instability and estimate the lifetime of the $p$-wave molecules due to the collisional relaxation into trimers. We discuss consequences for the experimental achievement of $p$-wave superfluids in both weakly and strongly resonant regimes.

We study the problem of rapid change of the interaction parameter (quench) in a many-body low-dimensional system. It is shown that, measuring the correlation functions after the quench, the information about a spectrum of collective excitations in a system can be obtained. This observation is supported by analysis of several integrable models and we argue that it is valid for nonintegrable models as well. Our conclusions are supplemented by performing exact numerical simulations on finite systems. We propose that measuring the power spectrum in a dynamically split 1D Bose-Einsten condensate into two coupled condensates can be used as an experimental test of our predictions.

We report on the realization of a multiorbital system with ultracold atoms in the excited bands of a 3D optical lattice by selectively controlling the band population along a given lattice direction. The lifetime of the atoms in the excited band is found to be considerably longer (10–100 times) than the characteristic time scale for intersite tunneling, thus opening the path for orbital selective many-body physics with ultracold atoms. Upon exciting the atoms from an initial lowest band Mott-insulating state to higher lying bands, we observe the dynamical emergence of coherence in 1D (and 2D), compatible with Bose-Einstein condensation to a nonzero momentum state.

The Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) critical temperature in a relativistic ideal Bose gas of identical bosons, with and without the antibosons expected to be pair-produced abundantly at sufficiently hot temperatures, is exactly calculated for all boson number densities, all boson point rest masses, and all temperatures. The Helmholtz free energy at the critical BEC temperature is lower with antibosons, thus implying that omitting antibosons always leads to the computation of a metastable state.

We present an analytic study for subdiffusive escape of overdamped particles out of a cusp-shaped parabolic potential well which are driven by thermal, fractional Gaussian noise with a $1/{\omega }^{1-\alpha }$ power spectrum. This long-standing challenge becomes mathematically tractable by use of a generalized Langevin dynamics via its corresponding non-Markovian, time-convolutionless master equation: We find that the escape is governed asymptotically by a power-law whose exponent depends exponentially on the ratio of barrier height and temperature. This result is in distinct contrast to a description with a corresponding subdiffusive fractional Fokker-Planck approach, thus providing experimentalists an amenable testbed to differentiate between the two escape scenarios.

The $N$-body problem in a tilted double well requires new features for macroscopic quantum superposition in ultracold atoms. In particular, one needs to go beyond the single-particle ground state in each well. We provide explicit criteria for when two energy levels are needed to describe the state space. For typical experimental parameters, two levels are indeed required for the creation of macroscopic superposition states. Furthermore, we show that a small tilt causes the collapse of such states. However, partial macroscopic superposition states reappear when the tilt can be compensated by atom-atom interactions.

We studied the splitting instability of a quadruply charged vortex both experimentally and theoretically. The density defect, which is a signature of the vortex core, is experimentally observed to deform into a linear shape. The deformed defect is theoretically confirmed to be an array of four linearly aligned singly charged vortices. The array of vortices rotates and precesses simultaneously with different angular velocities. The initial state of the system is not rotationally symmetric, which enables spontaneous splitting without external perturbations.