Many exotic phenomena in strongly correlated electron systems emerge from the interplay between spin and motional degrees of freedom [1, 2]. For example, doping an antiferromagnet gives rise to interesting phases including pseudogap states and high-temperature superconductors [3]. A promising route towards achieving a complete understanding of these materials begins with analytic and computational analysis of simplified models. Quantum simulation has recently emerged as a complementary approach towards understanding these models [4][5][6][7][8]. Ultracold fermions in optical lattices offer the potential to answer open questions on the lowtemperature regime of the doped Hubbard model [9][10][11], which is thought to capture essential aspects of the cuprate superconductor phase diagram but is numerically intractable in that parameter regime. Already, Mott-insulating phases and short-range antiferromagnetic correlations have been observed, but temperatures were too high to create an antiferromagnet [12][13][14][15]. A new perspective is afforded by quantum gas microscopy [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], which allows readout of magnetic correlations at the site-resolved level [25][26][27][28]. Here we report the realization of an antiferromagnet in a repulsively interacting Fermi gas on a 2D square lattice of approximately 80 sites. Using site-resolved imaging, we detect (finite-size) antiferromagnetic long-range order (LRO) through the development of a peak in the spin structure factor and the divergence of the correlation length that reaches the size of the system. At our lowest temperature of T/t = 0.25(2) we find strong order across the entire sample, where the staggered magnetization approaches the ground-state value. Our experimental platform enables doping away from half filling, where pseudogap states and stripe ordering are expected, but theoretical methods become numerically intractable. In this regime we find that the antiferromagnetic LRO persists to hole dopings of about 15%, providing a guideline for computational methods. Our results demonstrate that quantum gas microscopy of ultracold fermions in optical lattices can now address open questions on the low-temperature Hubbard model.The Hubbard Hamiltonian is a fundamental model for spinful lattice electrons describing a competition between kinetic energy t and interaction energy U [29]. In the limiting case of half-filling (average one particle per site) and dominant interactions (U/t 1) the Hubbard model maps to the Heisenberg model [1]. There, the exchange energy J = 4t 2 /U can give rise to antiferromagnetically ordered states at low temperatures [30]. This order persists for all finite U/t, where charge fluctuations reduce the ordering strength [31]. Away from half-filling, the coupling between motional and spin degrees of freedom is expected to give rise to a rich many-body phase diagram (see Fig. 1a), which is challenging to understand theoretically due to the fermion sign problem [32]. Even so, in the thermodynamic limit com...
We demonstrate site-resolved imaging of individual fermionic 6 Li atoms in a 2D optical lattice. To preserve the density distribution during fluorescence imaging, we simultaneously cool the atoms with 3D Raman sideband cooling. This laser cooling technique, demonstrated here for the first time for 6 Li atoms, also provides a pathway to rapid low-entropy filling of an optical lattice. We are able to determine the occupation of individual lattice sites with a fidelity >95%, enabling direct, local measurement of particle correlations in Fermi lattice systems. This ability will be instrumental for creating and investigating low-temperature phases of the Fermi-Hubbard model, including antiferromagnets and d-wave superfluidity.
Exotic phases of matter can emerge from strong correlations in quantum many-body systems. Quantum gas microscopy affords the opportunity to study these correlations with unprecedented detail. Here we report site-resolved observations of antiferromagnetic correlations in a two-dimensional, Hubbard-regime optical lattice and demonstrate the ability to measure the spin-correlation function over any distance. We measure the in-situ distributions of the particle density and magnetic correlations, extract thermodynamic quantities from comparisons to theory, and observe statistically significant correlations over three lattice sites. The temperatures that we reach approach the limits of available numerical simulations. The direct access to many-body physics at the single-particle level demonstrated by our results will further our understanding of how the interplay of motion and magnetism gives rise to new states of matter.PACS numbers: 37.10. Jk, 67.85.Lm, 71.10.Fd, 75.10.Jm, Quantum many-body systems exhibiting magnetic correlations underlie a wide variety of phenomena. Hightemperature superconductivity, for example, can arise from the correlated motion of holes on an antiferromagnetic (AFM) Mott insulator [1,2]. It is possible to probe physical analogs of such systems using ultracold atoms in lattices, which introduce a degree of control that is not available in conventional solid-state systems [3,4]. Recent experiments exploring the Hubbard model with cold atoms are accessing temperatures where AFM correlations form, but have only observed these correlations via measurements that were averages over inhomogeneous systems [5,6]. The recent development of site-resolved imaging for fermionic quantum gases [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] provides the ability to directly detect the correlations and fluctuations present in a fermionic quantum many-body state. As demonstrated in experiments with both bosons [14,15] and fermions [12,13,16], microscopy gives access to the spatial variation in observables that occurs in an inhomogeneous system, yielding precise comparisons with theory. The low energy scales in cold atom systems also allow for time-resolved observations of many-body dynamics, which typically occur on millisecond timescales. In bosonic systems temporal and spatial resolution have been combined to observe strongly correlated quantum walks [17], to measure entanglement entropy [18], and to study the dynamics of magnetic correlations [19,20].Here we report the first trap-resolved observations of magnetic correlations in a Fermi-lattice system. Fermionic atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice can be well described by the Hubbard Hamiltonian, a simple model in which there is a competition between the nearest-neighbor tunneling energy t and the on-site interaction energy U . Despite the apparent simplicity of the Hubbard model it has a rich phase diagram, containing for example the transition from a metal to a Mott insulator. AFM spin correlations begin to appear near half-filling when the temperature scale becomes comp...
The complexity of quantum many-body systems originates from the interplay of strong interactions, quantum statistics, and the large number of quantum-mechanical degrees of freedom. Probing these systems on a microscopic level with single-site resolution offers important insights. Here we report site-resolved imaging of two-component fermionic Mott insulators, metals, and band insulators, using ultracold atoms in a square lattice. For strong repulsive interactions, we observed two-dimensional Mott insulators containing over 400 atoms. For intermediate interactions, we observed a coexistence of phases. From comparison to theory, we find trap-averaged entropies per particle of 1.0 times the Boltzmann constant (k(B)). In the band insulator, we find local entropies as low as 0.5 k(B). Access to local observables will aid the understanding of fermionic many-body systems in regimes inaccessible by modern theoretical methods.
Accessing new regimes in quantum simulation requires the development of new techniques for quantum state preparation. We demonstrate the quantum state engineering of a strongly correlated many-body state of the two-component repulsive Fermi-Hubbard model on a square lattice. Our scheme makes use of an ultralow entropy doublon band insulator created through entropy redistribution. After isolating the band insulator, we change the underlying potential to expand it into a half-filled system. The final many-body state realized shows strong antiferromagnetic correlations and a temperature below the exchange energy. We observe an increase in entropy, which we find is likely caused by the many-body physics in the last step of the scheme. This technique is promising for low-temperature studies of cold-atom-based lattice models.
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