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Cooling fermionic atoms in optical lattices by shaping the confinement

Jean-Sébastien Bernier, Corinna Kollath, Antoine Georges, Lorenzo De Leo, Fabrice Gerbier, Christophe Salomon, and Michael Köhl
Phys. Rev. A 79, 061601(R) – Published 3 June 2009

Abstract

We propose an experimental procedure to cool fermionic atoms loaded into an optical lattice. The central idea is to spatially divide the system into entropy-rich and -poor regions by shaping the confining potential profile. Atoms in regions of high entropy per particle are subsequently isolated from the system. We discuss how to experimentally carry out this proposal and perform a quantitative study of its efficiency. We find that the entropy per particle, s, can typically be reduced by a factor of 10 such that entropies lower than s/kB0.2 can be reached. Cooling into highly sought-after quantum phases (such as an antiferromagnet) can thus be achieved. We show that this procedure is robust against variations of the experimental conditions.

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  • Received 30 January 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.79.061601

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Jean-Sébastien Bernier1, Corinna Kollath1, Antoine Georges1, Lorenzo De Leo1, Fabrice Gerbier2, Christophe Salomon2, and Michael Köhl3

  • 1Centre de Physique Théorique, CNRS, École Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France
  • 2Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, ENS, UPMC, CNRS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France
  • 3Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom

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Issue

Vol. 79, Iss. 6 — June 2009

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