Time-of-flight imaging method to observe signatures of antiferromagnetically ordered states of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice

TL;DR

This paper introduces a straightforward time-of-flight imaging technique combined with Feshbach resonance to detect antiferromagnetic order in fermionic atoms within optical lattices, revealing characteristic oscillations in the images.

Contribution

It presents a novel, simple method to observe antiferromagnetic states in fermionic atoms using TOF imaging and Feshbach resonance, supported by numerical simulations.

Findings

Oscillatory dynamics in TOF images indicate AF order

Method can distinguish AF states via characteristic scattering patterns

Numerical simulations confirm experimental observability

Abstract

We propose a simple method to detect the antiferromagnetic (AF) state of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice by combining a time-of-flight (TOF) imaging method and a Feshbach resonance. In this scheme, the nontrivial dynamics of fermionic atoms during the imaging process works as a probe with respect to the breaking of the translational symmetry in the AF state. Precise numerical simulations demonstrate that the characteristic oscillatory dynamics induced by the scattering process that transfers an AF ordering vector appears in TOF images, which can be easily observed experimentally.