Long-range interacting many-body systems with alkaline-earth-metal atoms

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of alkaline-earth-metal atoms, specifically bosonic strontium, to realize long-range interacting many-body systems with tunable properties, offering a new platform for quantum simulation and many-body physics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to utilize long-range dipolar interactions in alkaline-earth-metal atoms for studying complex many-body phenomena, providing an alternative to existing platforms.

Findings

Derived the many-body Master equation for the system

Analyzed excitation transport dynamics and spectroscopic signatures

Showed potential for creating long-lived collective atomic states

Abstract

Alkaline-earth-metal atoms exhibit long-range dipolar interactions, which are generated via the coherent exchange of photons on the 3P_0-3D_1-transition of the triplet manifold. In case of bosonic strontium, which we discuss here, this transition has a wavelength of 2.7 \mu m and a dipole moment of 2.46 Debye, and there exists a magic wavelength permitting the creation of optical lattices that are identical for the states 3P_0 and 3D_1. This interaction enables the realization and study of mixtures of hard-core lattice bosons featuring long-range hopping, with tuneable disorder and anisotropy. We derive the many-body Master equation, investigate the dynamics of excitation transport and analyze spectroscopic signatures stemming from coherent long-range interactions and collective dissipation. Our results show that lattice gases of alkaline-earth-metal atoms permit the creation of long-lived collective atomic states and constitute a simple and versatile platform for the exploration of many-body systems with long-range interactions. As such, they represent an alternative to current related efforts employing Rydberg gases, atoms with large magnetic moment, or polar molecules.