Inducing spin-dependent tunneling to probe magnetic correlations in optical lattices

TL;DR

The paper proposes a simple experimental technique using spin-dependent tunneling and Raman transitions to detect antiferromagnetic correlations in ultracold Fermi gases within optical lattices, supported by quantum Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, experimentally feasible method to probe magnetic correlations in optical lattices through spin-selective vibrational excitation and tunneling dynamics analysis.

Findings

Successfully simulated the method's ability to detect antiferromagnetic correlations.

Demonstrated the difference in tunneling dynamics between spin species.

Showed the feasibility of measuring doubly occupied sites to infer spin order.

Abstract

We suggest a simple experimental method for probing antiferromagnetic spin correlations of two-component Fermi gases in optical lattices. The method relies on a spin selective Raman transition to excite atoms of one spin species to their first excited vibrational mode where the tunneling is large. The resulting difference in the tunneling dynamics of the two spin species can then be exploited, to reveal the spin correlations by measuring the number of doubly occupied lattice sites at a later time. We perform quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the spin system and solve the optical lattice dynamics numerically to show how the timed probe can be used to identify antiferromagnetic spin correlations in optical lattices.