BEC2: The Sodium/Lithium Experiment with Optical Lattices
Welcome to the website for BEC 2. In this space you will find up to date news, descriptions of our current research topics, highlights of the lab history, and more. For an overview of the work of the Ketterle group and links to other labs, please go Alkali Quantum Gases @ MIT. We are part of the Center for Ultracold Atoms , which is a National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center.
Optical lattice emulator
We are currently part of the DARPA Optical Lattice Emulator program, which seeks to use fermionic atoms in optical lattices to model crystalline solids. We have chosen the 3-D Fermi-Hubbard model as our model Hamiltonian, and are working towards creating an anti-ferromagnetically ordered state of atoms in the optical lattice. See this popular article for an overview of the OLE program.
Mott-insulating and anti-ferromagnetic states
We are trying to create an anti-ferromagnetically (AFM) ordered state of repulsively interacting fermions in our 3-D optical lattice. To get to this state we need to achieve temperatures of around 3.5% of the Fermi temperature. At higher temperatures we first encounter the Mott-insulating (MI) state. At the moment we are working on characterizing the MI state as well as on cooling and detection techniques that will enable us to observe the AFM state.