Detection and manipulation of nuclear spin states in fermionic strontium

TL;DR

This paper presents methods for detecting and manipulating the nuclear spin states of ultracold fermionic 87Sr, enabling advanced quantum simulation and computation applications by improving spin-state preparation and measurement techniques.

Contribution

It introduces optical Stern-Gerlach separation and state-selective imaging for 87Sr, enhancing spin-state control and relaxation rate measurement in ultracold gases.

Findings

Successful implementation of optical Stern-Gerlach separation.

Optimized spin-state preparation via optical pumping.

Measured upper bound of spin relaxation rate.

Abstract

Fermionic 87Sr has a nuclear spin of I=9/2, higher than any other element with similar electronic structure. This large nuclear spin has many applications in quantum simulation and computation, for which preparation and detection of the spin state are requirements. For an ultracold 87Sr cloud, we show two complementary methods to characterize the spin-state mixture: optical Stern-Gerlach state separation and state-selective absorption imaging. We use these methods to optimize the preparation of a variety of spin-state mixtures by optical pumping and to measure an upper bound of the 87Sr spin relaxation rate.