Spin-orbit coupled two-electron Fermi gases of ytterbium atoms

TL;DR

This paper reports the all-optical realization of spin-orbit coupling in a two-electron Fermi gas of ytterbium atoms, leveraging their SU(N) symmetry for high stability and enabling new studies in spin-orbit physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel all-optical method to implement spin-orbit coupling in ytterbium fermions, exploiting their SU(N) symmetry for enhanced stability.

Findings

Observation of dephasing spin dynamics after opening the spin-orbit gap

Detection of asymmetric momentum distribution in the SOC Fermi gas

High stability of the spin states due to SU(N) symmetry

Abstract

We demonstrate all-optical implementation of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in a two-electron Fermi gas of $^{173}$Yb atoms by coupling two hyperfine ground states with a narrow optical transition. Due to the SU($N$) symmetry of the $^1$S$_0$ ground-state manifold which is insensitive to external magnetic fields, an optical AC Stark effect is applied to split the ground spin states, which exhibits a high stability compared with experiments on alkali and lanthanide atoms, and separate out an effective spin-1/2 subspace from other hyperfine levels for the realization of SOC. The dephasing spin dynamics when a momentum-dependent spin-orbit gap being suddenly opened and the asymmetric momentum distribution of the spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas are observed as a hallmark of SOC. The realization of all-optical SOC for ytterbium fermions should offer a new route to a long-lived spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas and greatly expand our capability in studying novel spin-orbit physics with alkaline-earth-like atoms.