Efficiently measuring $d$-wave pairing and beyond in quantum gas microscopes

TL;DR

This paper presents a protocol for measuring superconducting correlations in fermionic quantum gas microscopes, enabling better characterization of high-temperature superconductivity mechanisms using existing experimental capabilities.

Contribution

The authors introduce a robust, sample-efficient protocol for measuring long-range pairing correlations in fermionic quantum gas microscopes, expanding the toolkit for quantum simulation of superconductivity.

Findings

Protocol requires only global controls and site-resolved measurements.

Optimized pulses increase robustness to experimental imperfections.

Enables new insights into high-temperature superconductivity mechanisms.

Abstract

Understanding the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity is among the most important problems in physics, for which quantum simulation can provide new insights. However, it remains challenging to characterize superconductivity in existing cold-atom quantum simulation platforms. Here, we introduce a protocol for measuring a broad class of observables in fermionic quantum gas microscopes, including long-range superconducting pairing correlations (after a repulsive-to-attractive mapping). The protocol only requires global controls followed by site-resolved particle number measurements -- capabilities that have been already demonstrated in multiple experiments -- and is designed by analyzing the Hilbert-space structure of dimers of two sites. The protocol is sample efficient and we further optimize our pulses for robustness to experimental imperfections such as lattice inhomogeneity. Our work introduces a general tool for manipulating quantum states on optical lattices, enhancing their ability to tackle problems such as that of high-temperature superconductivity.