Synchronization of strongly interacting alkali-metal spins

TL;DR

This paper explores a dense gas regime where frequent collisions synchronize alkali-metal spins, leading to longer-lived hyperfine oscillations and nonlinear collective dynamics.

Contribution

It uncovers a new regime where many-body interactions synchronize spins, significantly altering hyperfine oscillation behavior in dense alkali-metal gases.

Findings

Hyperfine oscillations become longer-lived in dense gases.

Spin synchronization leads to a collective mode.

Frequency depends on ensemble state, indicating nonlinear dynamics.

Abstract

The spins of gaseous alkali atoms are commonly assumed to oscillate at a constant hyperfine frequency, which for many years has been used to define the Second. Indeed, under standard experimental conditions, the spins oscillate independently, only weakly perturbed and slowly decaying due to random spin-spin collisions. Here we consider a different, unexplored regime of very dense gas, where collisions, more frequent than the hyperfine frequency, dominate the dynamics. Counter-intuitively, we find that the hyperfine oscillations become significantly longer-lived, and their frequency becomes dependent on the state of the ensemble, manifesting strong nonlinear dynamics. We reveal that the nonlinearity originates from a many-body interaction which synchronizes the electronic spins, driving them into a single collective mode. The conditions for experimental realizations of this regime are outlined.